


Sunrise Loss

by leechailatten



Category: NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst and Romance, BDSM Scene, Bittersweet Ending, Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Dark Fantasy, Demonic Possession, Historical, M/M, Medicine, Minor Character Death, Praise Kink, Sex, Soul-Crushing, death overall, self-indulgent fanfic made public :), way too much itallics for the vibe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29724564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leechailatten/pseuds/leechailatten
Summary: There was a saying -maybe present in Taeyong's mind because he heard a loose verse of a scholar during a tea serving, maybe written with charcoal at the margin of a book- that said that those who don’t get a spoonful of what they crave, end up licking it up from a knife.He craved the affection like a plant craves the sun to subsist.Ten was the knife.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This story has a chinese setting and folklore. I aknowledge that korean and chinese culture are not the same at all. This fanfic is merely inspired by the fact that Ten has a chinese name and it's supposed to promote in China, so the idea came to me. Blame this to my free time spent watching chinese fantasy dramas and the pile of chinese books I have read thoruoug the useless years of my carreer. 
> 
> ***

When you grow up surrounded by a dark forest of coal, it's hard to understand that not everyone is covered in a black dust up to the knees nor the palms of their hands can be clean. 

In the center of the nine provinces of Yu, it stood a city under the name of Ru'nan. It was the end of August, and through the street of the bustling place, Taeyong rummaged his shirt despite not needing more coverage under the sun. 

Both him and his mentor had been summoned to a client's house, and judging by the state of disarray in which the servant of the house was when she bursted through the door of the pharmacy -earning Taeyong a smack of his head against the counter when he let go of his tucked chin on his hand, scared by the sudden interruption of his boredom- to ask for help, it must be an urgent case. 

The house that they were heading to was one that Taeyong could much recognize as he walked behind the doctor. It did not belong to a very rich family, but there's not many people who didn't get to know the family that ran the successful businesses of beautifully shaped caramel sticks. 

After the death of the head of the Li clan, who had started this practice of shaping melted sugar into flashy, edible art, his eldest son, came to inherit his father's wealth and the business. He moved the kitchen -that was mostly a stove to warm the sugar and water and a plate to pour the caramel- to a pretty location to make a store instead of keep selling the foods in the street with a stan that flew off every time there was wind or rain. 

The treats had soon attracted children and maiden's attention with their complicated and grateful shapes and the fame of the Li family had quickly acquired a good name, position and wealth. 

They also had a young son, but he appeared to be a scholar of law, aspiring to one day serve in the office under the acceptance of the emperor's court as a bureaucrat. 

The family was indeed known to be kind, and upon that knowledge, Taeyong felt a pressure over his shoulders, right on the middle of his shoulder blades, for he had once more strained himself into a mindset where he had to try all the range of his still blooming abilities to overcome whichever ailment there was to solve. 

As they arrived at the house, the servant that had notified them of their need hurried up to open the door for them, and both the healers entered the residence. 

Taeyong paid all his mind to the surrounding area, as they were promptly guided across the halls to what he supposed would be a bedroom. Before the door, a man stood waiting for them. 

The man was barely in his sixties, and probably just counted a few years less than Taeyong’s parents. His hair only had started to turn gray at some parts that blended out at the roots of his hairstyle, but his eyes seemed tired by a long time, as if he lacked the sleep of a week at least. 

"Good evening, sir" greeted the doctor Byun with a steady, polite tone and a bow that Taeyong followed as well. "I'm the doctor you summoned to your house, Byun Baekhyun, and this is my pupil and assistant, Lee Taeyong"

"At your service, sir" 

"Could you let us know what we can help with?" 

"Thanks to the Gods that you arrived" said the man, which Taeyong had no option but to identify as the master of the house. By the urgency of the servant he had believed that it would be the very same householder who needed a treatment, and even though the man didn't look good, he appeared to be healthy. "My family has been stricken by woe, and we urgently need help with your good reputation as a doctor. We wouldn't dare to call someone with less capacity than you, Doctor, for our precious son Minhyun has been attacked by a cruel calamity" 

Taeyong tilted his head as the man spoke, surprised by this reveal. 

"Can I ask what happened, sir?" Asked the Doctor Byun seriously. 

It was a routine question that they always asked at the beginning of their examinations, but this time Taeyong was truly intrigued. 

Normally, people would exaggerate every sore or cramp they had and call it a punishment from above, but he knew that no man that looked as desperate as the one in front of him would fool around with the wellbeing of a son. Being that so, he truly felt curious by the possible aspect of such 'calamity' and its consequences. 

What could have possibly attacked the scholar son of an honorable man. 

"We are as confused as they come as well, Doctor. A couple of weeks ago, my son departed to the northern cities to pay a visit to a respected friend of our family. He spent some days over at the house and prepared to come back to us after that. Since the way takes several days to complete, he joined an entourage of traders and travelers coming to the city. They were delaying their arrival by a couple of days, but we thought that some incidents could have happened in the road and they were taking some time to fix it before they resumed the march. Alas, this morning a runaway horse entered the city galloping and our son came mounted on it looking shredder and bleeding profusely. He was at the edge of collapse, as well, and soon we learned that…" The man paused and looked from side to side, as if he tried to check that no one was around to eavesdrop. He then lowered his voice and continued speaking. "... the whole convoy had been slain except for Minhyun, who managed to come back to us. We called you as soon as we were able to" 

"I understand" ushered the doctor, nodding his head as he remained calm even after the whole narration that, needless to say, did not appear to be a relieving telling. 

Taeyong held a great admiration towards his mentor in moments like this, aspiring to be at least a bit of how he was when he helped people. 

After all, that was all of Taeyong wanted to do and the sole reason to become a medic. With determination and a bit of luck, he could become someone useful that aided those who needed an easement during this hard life in the city. 

"Do you think you can do something for him, Doctor?"

"It's hard to tell in advance, sir. Can we take a look at the patient?"

"Of course, please follow me into the room" he said, seemingly growing unsettled as Taeyong remained silent. The development of his afternoon had very clearly flipped over. "My son is currently resting in his bed, but we are afraid that he has lost his conscience reaching this rate. We are very worried, his mother is very saddened and weak due to his state" 

The householder of the Li family opened the door in front of which the heales had been waiting, leading the way in. 

As Taeyong ventured inside the dormitory, at Baekhyun's trail, he was welcomed by a room with nicely carved frames and furniture. It was not the chamber of a duke, but the stance was pretty and welcoming nonetheless, proper of the son of a successful merchant. 

There were two lamps bracketing a desk that was now empty of any paper, nor an inkstone and grinder, for the owner of those items had been out and probably lost all his documents whatsoever. 

Pulled at the back of the room, there was the bed, as black as the rest of the lacquered pieces of furniture and carved prettily with a set of vines. 

However, the situation wasn't a good one to stop to admire the high quality labour of wood carvers around the city, since the young man that was resting on the mattress really appeared absolutely mashed. 

Taeyong didn’t gasp, but it was just out of the vocation as a proper healer and the manners he should keep in front of the family, because he had never seen something like that before. 

He held his breath, growing uneasy. And it wasn't as if he wasn't used to helping people cure different types of infection, injuries or even pustules, it was just that Minhyun seemed to have been caught under a ravenous attack. 

He was covered in deep purple welts, which splashed his unnaturally pale skin here and there as if he had rolled down a cliff of sharp stones. He had dark, puffy circles under his eyes and his lips were chapped and broken. In addition, he also had wounds on his body, as if something had cut the flesh cleanly. 

A maid was trying her best to get rid of the dried blood, beginning to turn dark at the edges of the cuts. Taeyong took the luxury of walking towards her and tapping her shoulder without further ado. 

"Miss, thank you for your hard work up until now, I'm sure the young master will appreciate your effort. You can leave that to me now, my mentor and I will take care of the young master from now on" 

The woman stared at Taeyong with a concerned glance that the man couldn’t blame, as he gently helped her standing up. She then looked at his master and the doctor with questioning eyes, searching for a confirmation of these words. 

"Yes, miss" nodded Baekhyun with a smile, gesturing towards the door. "You can do as Taeyong says, he is my trustworthy assistant and very capable of taking care of the young master"

She nodded firmly, bowing to them respectfully and hurrying up to leave the room. She was barely a woman in her twenties, and she must be terrified of the vision of the family's son in such a state, so Taeyong was eager to free her from the moment of stress. 

"If the sirs need my help, I will be in the kitchen" 

"Indeed, miss" Interrupted Baekhyun. "If you find yourself with time, you may boil some water and prepare mint tea?"

"Of course, Doctor, I'll be on my way" 

She left as soon as she finished the phrase. 

Baekhyun then gave a brief glance and a knowing smirk to Taeyong, eliciting a discreet smile from his part as well. 

He knew that it was very soon for his mentor to pronounce a diagnosis and ask for medicine without checking the wounds or symptoms, yet the task would keep the maid busy out of the room and with something to make her believe she was doing an important job, therefore she wouldn't be beating herself up mentally for a supposed lacking lifestyle.

By the end, it would save her some stress, and the mint tea wouldn't go to waste when the doctor recommended her to take one cup of it, for it helped easing up a nervous state. 

Taeyong was glad that his mentor surmised his preoccupation for her and he took care of her gently. 

Baekhyun was truly a great man in Taeyong’s sweet eyes. 

But there was no time to spare in little exchanges of gestures now, and Taeyong had no doubts about that. He quickly moved towards the sleeping boy and took a look at him, starting by opening his bag of supplies to settle down clean towels and bandages, as well as a washbasin that he filled up with water that the house's staff had got them ready in big jars. 

They really had tried their best to speed up the attention and keep the man as safe as possible, which was a clue of the value they were puttin in the young master. 

As for Baekhyun, he let Taeyong proceed with this basic cares and returned to his serious countenance, observing the boy with a pensive gesture. 

"How long has he been asleep?" 

"For a couple of hours, I think. Perhaps more" 

"Has anyone tried to wake him up?"

"We tried to call him to give him water and food, but he didn't respond. Even when we moved him to the bed or the servants started washing him, he doesn't react, we are truly worried"

Baekhyun humphed quietly, stroking his chin between his thumb and index. Upon hearing the father's explanation, Taeyong understood the worry too. 

"Did he say something about the incident? Maybe how he was attacked or what caused the wounds?" 

The man makes a noticeable pause.

"What's wrong, sir?" 

"We don't know what truly happened but when he arrived he was unsettled as never before, terrified. He then brought understanding that the convoy was assailed by an evil ghost and that no one was left with life but him. He affirmed that he woke up in the middle of a bloodbath and left as soon as possible"

Even Taeyong stopped what he was doing for a moment to look at the householder attentively. 

What did he say?

"Well, sir, Taeyong and I will try to lessen your son's pain to the best of our capacity" said Baekhyun, nodding politely and reassuring the man as he could. "It is best for us now that you wait outside while we do the revision, it causes less stress to both parties, so I will ask you to leave" 

"Is it necessary?"

"It’s convenient, sir" 

With a reluctant exhale, Minhyun's father nodded and went to the door. 

"Call me if any inconvenience happens, I beg you. He is my only son, I wouldn't live in peace if something happens to him"

"Of course, sir. We are here to ensure his health as much as possible" 

"Thank you, doctor Byun"

At last, the man left the room, and the doctor pursed his lips, sighing with audible tiredness in his voice. 

He looked at his pupil, applying an anti-inflammatory ointment to the bruises of the boy's face. 

"How does he look, Taeyong?" 

"Not good" he murmured with sincerity. There was no place for sugar-coated diagnoses when two medics discussed. "I was waiting for his father to leave to check the rest of his body, but at first sight, it already looks like his clothes are soaked with blood at some parts so he must have more cuts. He probably lost a lot of blood by the moment he arrived here" 

"Let’s check, then"

With extremely careful moves, both the medics started undoing the laces and ties of the under robe clothing that covered Minhyun, soon finding that Taeyong had done his guesses right, for the man was covered in irregular wounds all over his torso. 

They were everywhere they looked at. Clean cuts all over the place, but even if the flesh wasn't teared apart, the wounds were deep and swollen. 

Taeyong scrunched his nose quite displeased. It probably was the most grueling image he had faced during a shift so far. 

"What is this? Poor thing, whatever happened to him it sure was a mad experience" 

"He sure went through a lot, whatever it was" sentenced Baekhyun, proceeding to tie the long sleeves of his shirt back, hold them with a string and wash his hands with soap. Taeyong, meanwhile, took a brief look at one of the wounds, trying to estimate with proper precision it's stage and tunneling, but even at first sight, some looked deep. "Let me perform a palpation to determine how his internal state is going, I don’t find it very appeasing that he has been unconscious for so long. It's probably worse than it looks like" 

"Yes, sir"

"You can take care of bandaging his wounds, we don't want him losing more blood. Apply some ointment too, they seem like they have started swelling, we must avoid infections" 

"Yes, sir" repeated Taeyong, unfolding his tasks right away, no matter how discouraging the case looked deep down. 

He cleaned the skin and carefully whipped the dirt away from the cuts as good as he could, he applied the calming medicine and bandaged all of the cuts carefully, paying more attention and time to those who were clearly deeper, in which he pressed cold packs to slow down and block the bleeding.

In the meantime, the Doctor Byun took over his job with the most difficult part, pressing the pads of his fingers to the thoracic and abdominal area, paying attention to the tact. 

Taeyong quietly moved aside to let his mentor assess the problem, and observed very attentively how he did it, trying to absorb some of the knowledge or skills for himself. 

The doctor had the posture of a sentinel when he dealt with a case, which made Taeyong momentarily forget that Baekhyun was far more effervescent once a life wasn’t in his hands. He had his black hair tied up in a bun that he held up with the help of a ribbon, and only some wafts of hair got loose at the front and fell on his eyes. 

Every move he made was precise and full of purpose. Before Taeyong even started learning medicine, he had placed faith in Baekhyun's knowledge as a doctor when he was in charge of treating an upsetting high fever from his sister and he took notice of the calm and serious expression that he was able to show in front of people as he attended them. 

It was a mask of convenience that he put on in front of patients and relatives and then discharged at the first turn of a corner, but that unhurried temperance, even if transitory, settled Taeyong in a vast calm. He too, aspired to be a person that could remind more unshaken at times, or at least, be by the side of someone that could. 

When the doctor was done, he took another minute of silence looking at the patient with an expression that Taeyong had already familiarised himself with. 

"What is it?" 

"He is in shock, he is bruised and presenting inflammation, so he is most likely having an internal hemorrhage. Together with the overall blood lost due to his wounds, he is very weak and holding onto live as he can" 

"You think?" Asked Taeyong, knowing that there weren't many chances for the doctor to be wrong, as the synthonps were very clear. "I believe that too"

"Why do you think so?" Asked Baekhyun almighty. He always had time for a mini test of Taeyong’s progresses, and as much as they unsettled the younger, he always took the chance. 

"Because all the signs point to him suffering a strong traumatism in his upper body" explained Taeyong, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. "He presents bruises here and here" he said pointing at aforesaid purple blotches. "And if the father's story is true to the facts, whatever the attack was, the young master seemed to run away from an attack, so he probably fell down or suffered severe hits by either the attacker or the rushed flight" 

Baekhyun hummed, and Taeyong betrayed himself by eagerly looking at his mentor for approval. 

The older medic chuckled. 

"That's correct," he conferred. "Although, the cuts are clean and probably caused separately, probably by the attacker. Maybe a sword..." 

"Perhaps"

"Luckily they are clean and could heal well, but he is… he is weak now, as I said"

"And what can we do now?"

"Not much" sentenced Baekhyun, making Taeyong turn to see him with big eyes. "There's not a medicine that solves internal bleeding, all we can do is control his synthons and let him rest, luckily his body would absorb the bleeding slowly and we will get his functions back normally, but it will take a while of him bed resting"

"What? And what if it doesn't? What if he can't regulate it by himself?"

"We could… try a surgery and try to fix the problem by bloodletting the accumulated blood, but you know that that is not a safe procedure either, Taeyong. Not in this state, specially, we could cause him a problem by letting him half dry" 

Taeyong kneeled again, soaking a clean compress in cold water. 

He was hurt, because he knew Baekhyun was right.

"I'll put this on his forehead, the last thing this boy need is a fever" 

"Try to make him drink water, he is dehydrated" suggested Baekhyun with a sight, knowing the upset state in which the younger had submerged. "I'm going to try to deliver the news"

The pupil nibbled in his bottom lip as he looked at the kid, then he shook his head and sighed.

"Do you really think that he really encountered a ghost? Is it enough with one ghost to end an entire entourage of travelers and traders?"

"What kind of rabid creature could do this if not?" Asked the older of the two. 

Taeyong nodded. His mentor was right, but that was that concerned him most. 

Taeyong had heard about ghost creatures and their attacks on people, and he knew they were practically impossible to heal with the intervention of an ordinary medic. 

They always required the intervention of a sect of cultivators or someone very well versed in spiritual practices. 

Besides, it must have been at least a revengeful ghost to provoke all the damage that fell upon the young Minhyun. It was scary to watch, and sad, for he was a very young man that laid there with his innocent body crushed by a spiteful spirit that never found peace after death.

Taeyong found that very unfortunate. 

Not being able to rest in peace after one's passing sounded like a cruel punishment. It was then when mortal souls are supposed to be freed from the worldly regrets and sorrows, but those cursed souls never had the chance to take a rest, becoming ghosts full of pain. 

He pitied them. 

"It’s been very close to the city" he announced, thinking out loud. "The attack"

"Indeed"

Taeyong was growing disquieted and, in direct proportion, curious. 

"Have you ever encountered someone who has been attacked by a ghost before?"

"No, only heard of it. The city has been calm for a lot of years, I never got to treat someone like that in here, but I have heard of other people who did" 

"Me too, I have heard a lot of stories, but I never met someone attacked by a ghost. It has always been in cities that are far from here"

"It's scary, isn't it?"

"Yes, as far as I'm concerned, there are various types of ghosts. Some of them are only lost souls waiting at their burial place but there are many other kinds of more dangerous beasts. Some seek revenge, and others are consumed by hunger as a punishment for their sins, so they devour human flesh"

"So what are you trying to say? Do you think this man might be cursed?" Inquired Baekhyun, as if wondering out loud. Taeyong remembered that the mentor was barely a few years older than himself, which he sometimes forgot among the respectful glance he had for his mentor. "I don't know much about cultivation but he doesn't look cursed by a dark magic disease, only injured"

"But if the case really is due to a ghost, it must have been a high ranked ghost"

"High ranked ghost? What's that?"

"Don't you know about those stories, Doctor?" Asked Taeyong, as he shifted over the floorboards to get up and finally proceeded to fill a small bowl with water so he could try and water the patient. "Like the story of the resentful ghost Li Yongqing" 

"The one about the vile, power-hungry son of a noble family of this city that got them ruined by being zealous like… a century ago?"

Taeyong wrinkled his nose, analyzing the phrasing. 

"I heard he was a cultivator that dared to get in the profound Elderberries Forest and got attacked too" corrected Taeyong with his version of the narrative. "Like this boy, he was also very unfortunate, and at the end his body and soul were corrupted. I think is very saddening" 

"I have heard of it... Whatever it was, the man sounds like an absolute fool" dismissed the Doctor, gesturing vaguely with his hand. "But no one knows if that story is really trustable, it happened a hundred years ago and they never confirmed it, it's just a legend"

"But they never found his body"

"That's disturbing, but he might just ended up in ditch or a river"

"The family was wealthy and anxious, they probably didn't leave a stone unturned to find him and still didn't" 

"No, but listen, I heard that the family didn't go to find him because he was lost in that forest and feared the consequences, so maybe he really just died and his body decayed there"

"What?" Asked Taeyong, taken aback. "What kind of family cries for his son and claims he has turned a sinister ghost and doesn't look for his… you know? Mortal remains" 

"Because a few months after he disappeared, people started dying near the city gates so they assumed he was lost"

"Assumed? I can see why he turned revengful"

"Well, whatever happened that's not our case, we are not police chiefs or cultivators" cut up the doctor, watching Taeyong sit on the mattress near the convalescent scholar. "Whatever beast attacked this man, it left his sadistic trace behind, and our job is curing it, not taking the culprit in front of the judge" 

Taeyong nodded once, sniffling and going back to what he was doing. His mentor was right, the story behind it didn't matter now, Minhyun was dying in front of their eyes.

If he only could have known how to help Minhyun better, his mind might have stopped spinning his thoughts around. Alas, he only stood in the room watching over the patient. 

He decided it could be useful to grind some herbs with his mortar and apply the mix to his wounds to help them cicatrizing. In case of needing a surgery, it would be convenient to have all the other parts of his body stabilised.

Meanwhile, Taeyong overheard his mentor joining the parents outside of the room and explaining the prospect to the family with his soft voice and the charisma a doctor needed to deliver such bad news to the parents of an only son. 

It was while all of that was happening, that Minhyun weakly opened his eyes, putting his tired, brown irises on Taeyong, who was kneeling next to his bed and applying a medicine on his wounds.

He almost jolted with surprise, but he controlled himself and modulated his tone. 

"Hello, young master, it's good to see you conscious" he greeted, forcing a smile that could conceal what he had been hearing from the hallway. "Don't be startled by my presence, I'm Taeyong, the medicine pupil from the pharmacy downtown. You've got some ugly wounds all over you, but I'm here to put them away" 

"Did I make it home?"

Taeyong nodded in silence, reaching for the water bowl and handing it to the scholar, whose hoarse voice gave away the clear need for a sip of water, just like the Doctor Byun had said. 

"Your parents are outside, talking to my mentor," he explained patiently, trying to make the boy remain unsettled as much as possible. "They found him very quickly and summoned us here for you, they are very concerned" 

"As they should" 

Taeyong had gotten up to leave the empty bowl on the table and fill it up with more water for the kid, but turned around hastily because of his words. 

"Pardon, sir?" 

"I know I'm dying, doctor"

"That's-" Taeyong found himself shocked, not used to someone who admits so willingly of their passing while ill. "That's why we are here, young master. Me and my mentor will work hard to make you feel better" 

Taeyong didn’t like to watch other people suffering, he more likely preferred to find himself dealing with problems and live happiness through others, so he tried his best with a careful and collected speech, aiming to lift the mood of the young patient.

Whichever way, Minhyun was far from listening to his words all that much. He had his sight lost on the ceiling, barely conscious of his surroundings. 

He looked gone, but gone in a way that Taeyong wasn’t accustomed to. More than medically gone, it was his inner sense that faltered, and that made Taeyong shudder with a chilling touch.

"Does something hurt right now, sir?" He asked, trying to continue with his work. 

"It was terrifying," he muttered, as if revealing a secret. 

Maybe it was so, because Minhyun did not look like the type of son who likes to worry his family in excess with unnecessary information. 

The doctor, however, didn't know what to do in the situation. 

"It felt like a nightmare, maybe I'm still… asleep" 

Taeyong felt grieved, once more hovering and messing with his long robe. 

Everything smelt really fishy, but since he was the medic and he was very determined to help -as well as endlessly curious about what happened to the boy- he hurried up with the water and came back to the bed quickly, sitting near Minhyun. 

He helped him drink the content, ensuring that he didn't choke. 

"Perhaps the young master can tell me what happened? If we know how you got your wounds it will be easier to take care of them and give you a proper treatment, alright?" 

"I can try that. We… we were traveling..." whispered Minhyun with a gravelly voice, face crumpling as if remembering things was as hard as retelling something far. "We were passing through the forest in the outskirt, but we didn't leave the road. The night was falling but there were still hours of light, and we decided to finish crossing before resting. But suddenly one of the merchants started saying… started saying…" 

"Yes, young master?" 

Minhyun started coughing. It was normal considering that his throat was dry and stuffy, so Taeyong waited without hurrying him up as he finished drinking the water he gave him. 

"Take your time, please" 

"He started saying weird things"

"What kind of weird things?"

"He said that he had lost his shadow, that he couldn't see his shadow. We thought that he was odd, maybe falling sick, but then I looked at the ground and none of us were throwing a single bit of shadow"

Taeyong stared in silence trying to conceal his shock. That information was spooky, but still nothing that could help him aiding the boy with his health. 

"And then?" He asked, very intrigued nonetheless. "Were you attacked?" 

"Then… then everyone was dead on the ground and the blood flowed everywhere in such a manner that it pooled in the footprints of the road, it… it was… it was terrible. No human could have done that, no one is cruel enough to… do that, no one… no one is… " 

Minhyun seemed to stop, babbling and murmuring nonsense. 

Taeyong’s mouth shut immediately, comprehending that he wouldn't take any information from the poor boy and that trying to force the memories that probably became traumatic for Minhyun just because he was curious wasn't right. Thus, he removed the cold pack from his forehead and soaked a new one to replace it with one that was cold again. 

"It’s fine if you don't remember" he murmured, watching Minhyun return to the deep breaths and closed eyes. "We'll still work hard to heal your injuries"

"Thank you, doctor…"

"I will call your parents now, young master. They are probably desperate to see their son awake and talk to you, are you fine with that?"

Minhyun nodded his head weakly, letting the doctor tie the lace of his undergarment top to hide his bare skin from the modest eyes of his parents and, incidentally, spare them the worry of seeing so many bandages around their son as they got stained with red. They had enough with the faded, unfocused eyes, the pale bruised face and all the emaciated state of his spirit. 

Taeyong got up then, brushing the front of his white robe with golden and blue embroideries of roses to groom himself a little before going out to speak with the householders. 

"Doctor" mumbled the patient, mind still faded and unclear. Taeyong looked back at him. "Take care. And tell the people of Ru'nan to be careful as well. There’s an unleashed calamity out there" 

Taeyong sucked his bottom lip in and slipped through the door. 

He walked to the hallway, decorated with beautiful scrolls of flowers and other majestic views of the country, and then stepped into the courtyard, crossing it quickly to soon find the people he was looking for in the central hall. 

He excused himself to the servants as soon as he arrived, stepping in the room with a reverence. 

As expected, the mother was weeping and lamenting already, while the father tried to keep it together in front of Baekhyun just for the facade. Meanwhile the doctor tried to comfort the house's woman that, by the other hand, had wrapped her arms around the young and dashing medic and used his chest to bury her face and sob. 

Taeyong stood there for a second and then cleared his throat, calling for the attention of the presents. 

The doctor cautiously moved the woman back and held her from the elbow instead, gesturing towards his assistant. 

"Here comes Taeyong, ma'am. Is there something we should know, Taeyong?" 

Bakehyun nailed his eyes on him, advising him with his eyes that whatever news he carried, he should communicate them with tact. 

"Sirs, the young master is currently awake. I made sure that he drank water and was comfortable, but given the situation I thought that the right thing was to let the sirs know, in case that you want to pay him a visit" 

Bakehyun gave him an incredulous look, and Taeyong nodded once. 

Needless to say, both parents of the scholar did not waste a single moment of their time and exclaimed with haste and gloom. 

"Of course we are going to see him, immediately. Let's go" 

They exit the room like a couple of thunderbolts.

Baekhyun looked again at his pupil, eyes questioning what was going on and what changed in the spawn of barely one hour since he left the room. 

"He looks weak, Doctor, I don’t think he holds it for much longer" 

"Did he talk?"

"Yes, sir"

"And what did he say?"

Taeyong pursed his lips and sighed while he shrugged. 

"What a scared kid would say before dying, I can’t use his last moments to make him narrate his nightmare if it's not going to help" Baekhyun was shocked with Taeyong’s revelation, but he stayed silent and nodded. "What did you say to his parents?" 

"I explained what happened and the disadvantages of it. The situation is bad and I told them he is in great risk... I talked about the possibility of surgery with them and warned them of the dangers of it before they make a decision. They are devastated, specially the mother"

"I saw that" mustered Taeyong between his teeth, almost inaudible. He worked a strand of his white hair hanging from his high ponytail as he became pensive for a moment with his gaze lost in the courtyard. Still in a low tone, he added "He told me to watch out for the calamity out there" 

Baekhyun knitted his eyebrows. 

"Do you think we should be worried about that supposed… runaway ghost?"

Taeyong made eye contact with his mentor. 

His orbs were dark brown, but they looked hazel with the sunlight falling on them. They turned different in moments like that, and it was not only the color, but the sentiment within. Suddenly, the professional doctor was gone and instead, he is the gentle friend that Taeyong holds dearly in his heart.

"He sounded terrified, as if he had seen something that's not meant to be in this world…" 

"But… there's been years of peace in this town, why would a ghost appear now to terrorize the citizens?" 

The younger one is the first to give up under the pressure and look away, shrugging once more. 

"I'm just a pupil of a medic trying to learn something, I don’t know about that" 

Baekhyun sighed as well. 

"Well, then in any case we should warn Kai about this. I have been hearing that the new prime minister is supposed to stop by in the next weeks, and with this situation going on I'm sure they would appreciate the information, in case they need the security to double up" 

"Yes, it might be a good idea, just in case a ghost is really running errands" 

"Now shall we go to the dormitory? I think we gave them a moment alone with the son, we might be required"

"Sure" 

Both the medics followed the path that the householders had traveled before, entering the chamber of the scholar son to a sea of tears from his mother that was already holding onto his son like it was her dear life.

Baekhyun exhaled and went to hold her from her shoulders again, pulling her back. 

"Ma'am, get up, please. Your son will be better if you let him breathe fresh air, I know you can do that, you are a courageous woman, come here" 

"It’s okay, mother" assured Minhyun with a weak smile. He sounded even more hushed than before. "Listen to the doctor" 

"Minhyun, please, don't leave us, I beg you!" Still cried his mother as Baekhyun pushed her up and back while her hand clinged onto his clothes, as if holding him tightly would prevent his soul from slipping away. "Tell us who did this to you, it's not going to go unpunished, my son!"

"I don't know mother, I don’t know…" 

It was probably the starkest moment Taeyong had ever seen during a shift. He too went to the woman and pulled her up from the floor, staring at Baekhyun in that particular way. 

"Doctor, is it possible to perform the surgery now?" Asked the householder, approaching the Doctor Byun, who was losing the tranquility at that point. "Please, save our son"

"It’s risky, sir, as I said, and Minhyun is weak and injured now, it might not be recommendable to desecrate his body for nothing"

"Please, Doctor Byun!" Continued the mother sobbing. "He is so young, and bright, he has all his life to live!" 

"Ma'am, I beg you to understand that-" 

"But he is our only son! You are a doctor, and we are paying you and your stupid pupil so you should do something!"

"Ma'am! I understand your sorrow and frustration right now, I’m also grieved, believe me, but there's no reason for disrespecting Taeyong like that" 

Taeyong looked at his feet shyly, just murmuring a faint "It’s alright" that no one paid attention too besides the very same Minhyun. 

"Please, Doctor Byun" she wailed. "Save him! You don’t understand that this is my only son? I raised him since he was a baby, he has so much to do yet!"

"I can proceed to the surgery, ma'am, but you need to understand the risks of it given the state of the young master Minhyun" 

“Doctor” implored the father with a grave voice. Baekhyun seemed like he was about to sigh and bury his face on his palm, but he put his calm face on and tilted his head towards the man. “We are just so concerned for our son”

“I’m once again saying I will proceed if I have your explicit consent” he said, quite serious and, if Taeyong could guess something, even angry with the attitude of the two lords. “It’s a risky procedure with possible side effects that I let you know. He is young as well. Those are my conditions”

Minhyun’s mother was, once more, all wrapped around Baekhyun’s frame as she sobbed for his child while the doctor kept a stiff upper lip and patted her back lovingly. 

"Mom, dad" murmured the son. "It’s fine, my fate has been decided already"

"Don't say that, Minhyun, no, I won't allow this" whimpered the house's woman in a loud voice, throwing herself at the feet of the bed. "I can't let it happen" 

Minhyun turned his face, cheek pressing in on his pillow to stare at his mother sadly. 

Then, he looked at Taeyong, stealing his breath away as he saw the tears plunge from the dark eyes of the scholar. 

For some reason, Taeyong knew then that fighting for this cause was of no use and all his strength was channeled to try to put up with his mother.

It was energy consuming, and terrible to watch, Minhyun's father wasn't even able to keep up with the happenings and left the room after half an hour of witnessing his son struggle. 

It took about an entire hour in total, and Taeyong tried to keep Minhyun's cold packs and bandages clean and well all the time, just in case it could help or an improvement happened. 

After some time, the medic watched a strange stroke of black staining Minhyun's neck, and discreetly pulled the collar of the shirt down to check what that was. He watched in horror how a thin and black branch-like scar crawled up on his skin.

He kept quiet, knowing it was no human disease and thus, there was no human cure unless a very prolific priest crossed the door in no time. 

After all, at about seven in the afternoon, Minhyun finally expired his last breath between tears of both his mother and him while the woman wailed by his deceased son wondering what kind of dreadful calamity would take his sweet son away from her. 

She deemed it as  _ wrathful _ . 

After all of this happened before his very two eyes, Taeyong was clearly downcast, waiting for Baekhyun to fix the last details with the Li's family and helping them to fill up some required documents to report what happened, as well as calling the funeral parlor that would take care of the matter where Taeyong and Baekhyun left it.

The medic was looking at the floor in utter silence while his fingers played with one another at his front, getting tangled with the red ribbon that clinged to his waist to hold his robe. Baekhyun couldn't help but to make a small humoured sound and bump his shoulder against his pupil's own to give him a smile of endless comfort when he came back to meet him at the outer hallway of the house.

"Don't get discouraged, it was not your fault" he cooed, using the friendly, sweet and high-pitched voice that Taeyong had been growing used to from his mentor. "You did everything that was in your hand, and that's everything a medic can do sometimes. It was a good job today, Taeyong" 

Taeyong’s eyes twinkled, and his lips twitched before he could nod shyly to his mentor. 

"We should now watch our backs, don't we?"

Baekhyun shrugged once more. He appeared to be skeptical, but what can one expect from a scientist.

"If the young master, now rest in peace, wasn't being delirious, then that's what I guess. I'm going to take a detour and reach police prefect Kai on my way home, I should make him know about this. Can you return to yours by yourself?"

"Yes, there’s no problem"

That was true, Taeyong was a well grown adult that could very much take care of himself. It would have no point trying to help other people with care if Taeyong was unable to pull himself up.

He too was glad that Baekhyun, despite his reluctance, had the sense to warn Kai about the last events. 

To Taeyong, it was unclear how Baekhyun and Kai met each other and became friends, for they were visibly different. The doctor insisted that they met when they were children because their mother's would take them to play around the same area and the friendship blossomed with time. 

Taeyong supposed that that's how friendships were built, after all. 

However, it was good to have been able to meet the district's head bailiff, because not only was Kai an athletic, trained and determined prefect that could make a citizen feel safe inside the city gates, but also he was a very amicable person. 

Taeyong had been surprised at first, acting almost intimidated by the aspect of the man on his uniform and armor, carrying that sharp sword that surely could slice a stone with just one stroke; but the truth was that, as soon as they were face to face, the man's expression broke into a cosy, warm smile, greeting Taeyong with soft manners. 

Out of the armor, he just looked like a third class prefect of the state. And the same happened with Xuxi, with whom Taeyong had finally forged a lively camaraderie. Things came naturally when he had to see them often due to the high rate of injuries that were linked to events that needed police regulation. 

The world is a napkin. 

However, coming back to his eventful day, Taeyong had finished cleaning the items he used at the Li's house and handing them back to Li Na -the growing stressed servant of the house- at the kitchen. He even took the time to take over the tea herbs and the kettle she prepared and thank her for the service, pouring a cup and handing it to her. 

Throwing it away made no sense now, that's what he told her. She agreed at the end, sipping the verberage at the kitchen. 

Taeyong then gathered the leftover medical supplies of his and put them on his purse ready to leave. 

Outside, the sun was shining brightly with no awareness of what had happened in the now lugubrious Li house. The sun had descended a lot since Taeyong had arrived into the residence, but there was light still, and the heat was very present in the air.

He regretted leaving his fan behind when he left the house that day, but it wasn’t a really terrible inconvenience, since he enjoyed the warmth and the smell of summer rising up in the air. The leaves were turning that vivid green color and the city was surrounded by the fully vibrant landscape of trees enveloping it together with the sunlight, spreading the hot yet aromatic air through the always booked and rancid streets.

Some would have made a displeased face at it when knowing that, like Taeyong, they had to stroll under the scorching sun for a long way to reach back home, but the medic just loosened up the collar of his robe and undershirt and started walking. 

Honestly, after what he had gone through during the hours prior, a little bit of luninity and optimism wouldn't make him bad, and the yellow hues cascading through the houses, shops and restaurants of the commercial neighbourhood, helped with that. 

As he abandoned the thickly busy streets and reached a more open path that would walk him back to his simple, almost poor house, -being a medic only paid well when you were past the pupil range- Taeyong heard the muffled sound of hooves and wheels over gravel. 

He turned around, sort of waiting to see an official carriage heading out of the city after the supposedly near visit of the Prime Minister Taemin, but it was just a modest carriage of a countryman that transported his goods to the city to sell them, now heading back home, most likely. 

"Good evening, doctor!" Greeted the man that held the reigns of the beefy ox pulling from the carriage. Taeyong gestured with his head and a smile to greet him back, appreciating the kindness and slightly tingling with the recognition he was gaining among people. "Heading back home?"

"Yes, it's time to go back"

"Is it far, Doctor? The heat of summer is very exhausting after a day of serving people's health" 

"It’s fine, only a fifteen minutes walk down this way, nothing I can’t handle" 

"It’s a long way, Doctor" pointed the farmer, currently moving by Taeyong’s side with his obedient ox. "I'm heading that way as well, why don't you jump in the back of my cart? You must be tired" 

Taeyong laughed, and nodded one time. As he had said, he could use some optimism, and there was nothing better than being kindly offered a free ride back home after a day that had been indeed tiring. 

"Thank you, sir" he said, stopping for a moment to let the ox pass by and reach for the back of the carriage. 

It was a tall cart made of already old wood, definitely not a ride for an emperor, but Taeyong wasn't such either, and his feet hurt after all day, so he held on the side of the back part and, gaining momentum, he pushed himself up. 

Taeyong wasn't too short, but he wasn’t especially a tall person among some other men he had known, misjudging the height of the carriage and almost toppling back to the ground as he tried to get up on the moving vehicle. 

He was already thinking about the medical possibilities of a bad landing on his back -or even a worse scenario, his head- when he was held by a second passenger to the carriage that he had missed before. 

He gasped with the startling, momentary vertigo and grasped on the wood underneath his knees once he was steady. 

"Sorry for that, really" said Taeyong, unable to help a chuckle born from the embarrassment he feels about himself and the clumsy spectacle he just put up. "I don't know what happened to me, thank you for the help" 

His eyes rose up to look at the person who just aided him, finding a limber hand wrapped around an umbrella that blocked the view of his face with a distant grace. The thin fingers were long and pretty, and a couple of nail protectors shone with the metallic silver glow, throwing the faintest of the sound when they grazed the handle.

The final tilt of the person's red umbrella towards the sky made his countenance finally enter the luminous ray of luminosity that lighted up his face. 

He had a high nose, and his piercing eyes were enchantingly dark. 

His glossy black hair cascaded alongside his face, framing all his features like a dark sea of ink and tickling past his shoulders as if the locks wanted to reach his hips, hugged by the high waisted black skirt tied with a red ribbon. The soft strands were straight and pretty, but the front ones were tied up with a visible lack of care and crossed by the needle of his hairpiece so loosely that half of them were escaping with wisps. Still, among all the black, his lips were wine red with almost the same intensity of his linen shirt. 

A part of Taeyong suddenly wanted to gasp, but that wouldn't come out of him just for a stranger that appeared in his day by a narrow length of time.

"Carefully, falling from here would be an ugly hit" 

Taeyong nodded, almost rendered speechless by the appearance of a face sculpted like that. 

What was a noble with such allure doing at the back of the dirty carriage of a farmer? He could not find a reason, as the young man went back, sat down and leaned his back comfortably against the sacks of flour as if they were the fanciest chaise found on a mansion. 

"Yes, thank you"

The man gave him a head gesture and returned the umbrella down to project a shade over him that would protect him from the last rays of the summer sun. The red tassels hung from the edges like crimson rivers linking one another with the flowy design that swinged with the breeze, only leaving the luscious lips of the man be seen. 

Taeyong diverted his eyes from him, carefully hovering on the back of the carriage to sit on a place where he wouldn't be wobbling like a newborn calf and settling for the opposite corner by the side of the other man.

"It’s dangerous to go walking on the roads alone at this time, doctor" began the farmer again. "Haven't you heard the news?" 

Taeyong’s face went blank, confused with how could the rumor of Minhyun's passing reach out so fast, but then he concluded that there was no way the Li's family had let the news scape from their dignified house without the tact and pomp needed for a funeral rite that would honour their son properly, so he must be talking about something else. 

Not even Doctor Byun's quick blabbermouth would be that shameless when it came to a family broken by the pain of losing the only child. 

"What are those news that you talk about, sir?" 

"You don't know? I can tell why you were strolling so carefreely before, Doctor. A couple of merchants found an entourage this morning, abandoned in the road, some miles away from the city. They said everyone had been slaughtered!" 

Taeyong gulped. So what Minhyun said was the truth. That, for a fact, did not let the medic in a peaceful state of mind. 

"Slaughtered? All of them?" 

"About a dozen men, Doctor. They were all dead when they found them" 

"That's horrible, sir, was it so bad?" 

"The merchants were in utter shock, they said that the place was a carnage, dripping blood even from the leaves of trees above like it was raining"

"No one survived?"

"No one! The merchants even said that the corpses were cold and stiff as if they had been freezing in the snow for days, and their skin was turning black with scars like they were burnt or something… You are a doctor, have you heard of injuries like that before?"

"No" mustered Taeyong. "It’s something I never heard before from my mentor or read in books"

"That's because it is clearly a curse! The attack of a ghost!" 

"It clearly is, is it not?" Asked Taeyong, not having to fake his interest in the matter. 

The tassels of the passenger's umbrella moving and throwing a faint shadow over Taeyong was that reminded him that he was still there, listening to them. 

Taeyong tilted his head, finding his presence even more disconcerting. He could barely see him, but even that being the case, the medic could sense his calm. 

He was way too calm. 

Suspiciously calm. 

"I believe so, doctor! And not only me, everyone is already hearing what happened and saying that the outskirts' forest is now cursed. It's very frightening, some convoys are already thinking how to travel out without crossing that pass" 

"This is strange. What could have happened so suddenly for the forest to be hunted or cursed?" 

"I don't know about that, I heard the youngsters saying it’s because the ghost festival happened a few weeks back and that unleashed a creature. I just know that I'm not risking my life passing through that road!" 

"A dozen men were slaughtered..." repeated Taeyong in a lower tone as he started being pensive, sat on the charriage with a certain lack of care as his legs were bent and parted and his back leaning on the sacks of goods. After a while he asked again. "What kind of ghost is so untamed near a city, sir? It's a lot of people that passed away in just the blink of an eye. If they were a large entourage and still couldn't protect each other or put on a fight, shouldn't it be a very wrathful ghost?" 

"Whoa, that's even scarier!" Exclaimed the farmer, waving his hand in dismissal. "I don't want to talk about that, I don’t want to say anything more, it's probably a bad omen!".

"But, sir" kept Taeyong going in his personal crusade to reach the bottom of the matter and get acquainted with the calamity Minhyun warned him about in his deathbed. "What could have done it? Who is the scariest ghost or monster you know about?"

"In my opinion, doctor, and I hope I'm not right, it could be a hungry  _ jiangshi _ . In the night and with their corpses so empty, it might have stolen their energy and left them there" 

"A spiritual vampire?" Asked Taeyong, still pensive and wondering out loud more than asking the man. "No, it must be something quicker than that to end them so quickly. And something with more rage, jiangshis only want to feed, they don't kill and fly, and they also move very slow and dragging their feet"

"So what does the doctor think it was?"

"A resentful ghost"

"Like who?" 

"Like Li Yongqin"

"Li Yongqin?" Asked suddenly the stranger breaking his silence. His voice was somewhat tremulous and plush as his lips almost twitched up. His sharp eyes peeked out from behind the umbrella to give a look towards Taeyong. "Is he worse than a jiangshi?" 

Taeyong looked at this odd man quietly for a second, wondering if he was being toyed with just as it looked like.

Yet, the medic was dying to know more about everything that happened, and the young noble appeared to be astute for the unusual shine of his eyes, so there wasn’t a big reason yet to make Taeyong think he shouldn't tangle in that debate. 

"According to the story, that's the case, but I sadly don't know a lot about what happened back then since it was many years ago" 

"Yes, it has been a long time" nodded the man. "Thousands of years. It is strange that he is more talked about now that in his time, is it not?" 

"You talk like you know a lot about it" pointed out Taeyong, making the man grin with a vain gesture. 

What a strange man.

"I have heard the stories, like you. You seem to know, as well" 

"As I said, is not a lot that I currently know"

"Really?" He asked, highly moving his hand to check the state of his well manicured nails, as if the thing was not with him. Nonetheless, his moves and voice had something that pulled Taeyong’s attention towards him. "And what would that be?" 

"He was the son of a wealthy family, young, like you, more or less"

"Like me?" He grinned, in a way that made Taeyong wonder if he was being coquettish or just plainly, boldly, annoying. "That's a coincidence… what else?" 

"So… his father was the rightful owner of a very successful tea company that traded with their products all over the province of Yuzhou. He was supposed to take over his position but at the end it was his sister that inherited the job while he joined the lessons of a sect and became a cultivator"

"That's what I heard too"

"Yes, he learned the spiritual ways and did other religious work in a temple that used to be near the city, but one day he dared to get in the profound Elderberries Forest because he wanted to solve the problem of multiple people disappearing there during night routes"

"And then what?" Questioned the nobleman. 

Taeyong shrugged. 

"The legend say he became a wrathful ghost full of rancour and he never came back, so that’s why the temple decayed. No one knew about him anymore" 

"Yes? As far as I am concerned..." elaborated the man from under his umbrella. At that point, Taeyong had started finding the item very much to his displeasure, since it didn't let him fully check the countenance of the stranger. In fact, it was of no use anymore to carry an umbrella with the sun already so low. He was a really odd man, but then, his intervention struck a chord for the medic. "He was possessed"

The drop of his voice to a lower octave when he pronounced the words made Taeyong want to shudder.

Not thinking too much, he scooted closer to him, being welcomed under the red umbrella with a blatantly indifferent gesture of the man. 

He was a hard to encounter view for many reasons, one of them being the refined, courtly beauty of his face; his profile so unique that Taeyong almost had the impulse to touch it. 

But of course, he was no animal, he knew better than that. 

"Possesed?" He muttered under his breath, concerned that he was being auspicious in the wrong way. 

The man nodded and held his gaze. The blackness of his eyes was strangling.

"He was attacked by a chaos agent" he said, mimicking the low tone that Taeyong had used before, regretting it as a chill took over the medic with the cold, lingering breath of the man crashing on his face. His black hair went wavy on the wind, the edges of the strands messing with the ones at the bottom of the layers "And possessed" 

“Possessed?”

“Yes, possessed” he repeated, not yet backing from the posture that seemed now too close for Taeyong, even though it was him who had come in closer earlier. 

Well, there was no doubt that as odd as the man was, he had the belligerence of speech that kept Taeyong more careless of the unsuitable proximity between them in favour to keep reeling a conversation. 

He wasn’t either accustomed to someone who put that much effort to refute his opinions like that, since he was the prototype of an overly inquisitive youngster that becomes irritating after a little while; let’s not say someone belonging from a social class that permitted the flowy moves of his hands when he gesticulated whilst speaking, half-liquid and perfectly measured. 

“As you yourself said, he went to the Elderberries Forest because there had been several conflicts with people disappearing inside there” continued the stranger. “That was because it was the hideout of an ancient beast that no one could seem to defeat, but he ignored the older cultivators that called him rebellious and naive and decided he could fix it. The beast devoured all the souls that came in with a wide range of techniques and ideas to finish human lives. Li Yongqin was just a medium level cultivator,  _ mediocre  _ if you prefer that word, and came forward to the forest like a stupid”

“He was trying to help”

“And? What can a mere pupil do against an ancient beast that consumes souls? Because that’s what he encountered there”

“What? What was it?”

“The best was called  _ Hundun _ , and it was unlike anything he had ever seen before”

“How do you know that? I never heard of that, are you making it all up to scare me?”

“That you never heard it doesn’t mean that the story is not out there” retorted the man with no trace of humbleness. 

The sound of his comeback was puffed up without a doubt, yet Taeyong didn’t feel exactly offended, for he had the sensation that he was only being the target of a light hearted foolery. 

“Then what happened during his intercourse inside the Elderberries Forest?”

“You really are unyieldingly curious, are you not?”

“I’m a doctor, naturally, I have my intrigues” 

“Fine, but don’t get drowsy if I tell you”

“I’m not a child but a man”

“You sure are” grinned the stranger, taking another look at him and making his eyebrows twitch with a gesture that made Taeyong’s blood either freeze or run too hot. One or other made him feel a burn. “When he entered the forest he encountered a horrid beast called Hundun, a violent cluster of chaos with no form or face that had once been the son of an emperor and perished during a crude war to defend their kingdom. When he died, his fury and bitterness was so big that his soul was all dark and powerful, so he became a beast. The beast swore to get revenge of the debased men that ravaged their lands by never allowing peace for human kin near him. Yongqin encountered that and then, he was possessed by the asphyxiating, huge spirit that seized control of him and made his fragile human soul get subdued”

Taeyong's lip trembled, even though the noble diverted his eyes from him and, still impassive, continued to stare at the passing landscape at the sides of the road. 

He too, looked at the crowded side of the city becoming small at the end of the road while the carriage moved on, raising a cloud of dust. 

Where was a young noble going so far from the city center at that hour? 

But were his words true? Was that what happened in the story that Taeyong just have known halfways? 

If that was the case, the new discovery event made him feel even more pitiful with the whole ordeal. 

“Is that true?”

The nobleman shrugged and gave him a crooked smile that showed a perfect line of white teeth. 

“That’s what the story say, believe it or not”

Taeyong hummed, looking away. 

He felt so...

"That's so unfortunate, I'm sorry for him"

The unknown man turned at him almost with a lack of interest, staring at Taeyong with a tint which, alone by itself, could have reproached him for saying something so foolish. 

At some degree, it actually was, because pitying a ghost was something not seen before from any man that was sane in the brain.

"You are sorry for a serial killer ghost?" He asked with petulance, almost as if he was going to spit the words. 

Taeyong, however, wanted to stand his point once more.

"For Li Yongqing, I feel sorry. He must have wanted to help people with his spiritual skills so much if he declined a wealthy position that he could have inherited without problem. And then, he went to the Elderberries Forest because people were disappearing in there and no one was taking action, right?" He elaborated under the aloof eyes of the man that, nonetheless, kept listening to his poor medic nonsense. "And not he only died trying, but his soul is now unable to rest in peace like it should, so I stand my point that it's unfortunate and tragic… he gave everything away to help and yet..." 

"Impressive" blurted out the other man with scorn. He paused for a second and then he started giggling through his nose, shaking his head before he returned his attention to Taeyong. He finally put down the umbrella, closing it to let it rest by his side, and his eyes locked on his with a stern expression. "You are going to end up dead, sir" 

Taeyong scrunched his nose displeased by such an eerie and foreboding statement from nothing less than a stranger he encountered some moments ago in a flour charged carriage. Taeyong knew by his appearance and his dresses that the other man should be of higher status than him, but for a fact, he still didn't believe he could allow the disregard from him just because he belonged to a lower class. 

"Well, you, nor I, can even know if it was the ghost Li Yongqin who assaulted that convoy. It has been years of peace in this city, the mystery of what happened is probably going to be discussed thoroughly even by the literates" 

"And how does that change things about him?" Asked the stranger, prompting his elbow on a stack of flour sacks to lean his face on his palm, looking at Taeyong with that coy gesture of complacency. 

If Taeyong weren't so busy vehemently debating with him about spooky entities menacing to put the city under peril, he wouldn't have failed to be stricken by the incomprehensible beauty of his look. 

Somewhere down the road of the conversation, the aristocrat started looking like he was genuinely enjoying the exchange, and a curated eye could have even said that he was amusing himself with it. 

They said well-read people can't help themselves but seek amusement in the debate of every point. 

"Pardon?"

"Let’s assume that the attack was performed by another ghost, maybe even a jiangshi. In that case, Yongqin would be free from that crime. Yet, if he is a wrathful ghost as you affirmed moments prior, wouldn't he be the culprit of another long list of injuries?" 

"But we don't know the true story of what happened to him, so he perhaps didn't do anything like that" 

"Presumption of innocence?" He said with a chuckle. "For a ghost?" 

"I have heard all types of stories" said Taeyong, defending himself and his statement with a growing embarrassment and the pink dusting over his cheeks. "And none of them are written down, so they can be deformed by the time that has passed. I have even heard the telling of some maidens that swear he has a breathtaking, ravishing beauty" 

"Has he now?" Smirked the nobleman. "What for? Is he, by chance, a deliverer of the infamous  _ petite mort _ ? You know what that is, Doctor?" 

Taeyong diverted his eyes from the stranger, sulking and refusing to let him see the reaction that his unintelligent body was building, sending the blood to his face. 

"It is obviously one of the many things people say, my point was that the origins are unclear" 

“How elaborate” said the aristocrat, getting up from the place was at and making the doctor wonder what in the world was going on. He took his folded umbrella and gave a distant look to Taeyong with a gesture of his chin. "I too, stand my point, doctor. You are going to end up dead" 

"Why would you dare to say something so mean to a stranger? What do you know?"

"It’s a gut feeling" 

The words would stay engraved in Taeyong’s mind, as the man stood in the shadows of the darkening evening turning nigh. 

For a flickering moment, he too looked like a shadow, a titilant look of his former self coming up. 

"Farewell" he muttered, almost making Taeyong have to read his lips to understand what he said before he jumped off the charriage. 

Taeyong was puzzled, starting to understand what the man meant with his warning regarding his naïve approaches to people. 

He watched him walk away, back to the city center again, the moonlight so faint that it couldn't even make him throw a shadow over the road. 

"Sir, who was that strange young master?"

"I don't know, Doctor" replied the farmer from his spot. "I didn’t recognize him at once, he just asked if he could join me in the carriage to facilitate his travel to Huaiyang so I let him ride" 

"Huiyang is miles away from here, he is not even close to arriving" he pointed out, thinking out loud.

"He seems to be new at the city, he must be lost" 

"Yes" nodded Taeyong, holding on to his ingenuousness that wasn't such but high hopes to preserve peace around him. "He must be" 

What an odd man. 

Taeyong had had such a long, exhausting day, that he didn't want to look back at it anymore, nor brood about the strange encounter. 

He just hopped off the charriage when he arrived in his neighborhood, offered a couple of coins to the farmer in gratitude for his kindness, and proceeded to do his lonely night routine until he went to bed to sleep. 

Nonetheless, the shock lingered inside Taeyong for days, the awkward sensation tingling at the back of his mind and refusing to leave him that soon. 

Part of the reason was that his mind was rationalising facts, but his heart still ached for the deceased Minhyun and his family that mourned him in the following days to the eventful day. Another element that summed up to all of that, was the obvious spread of looming panic that took over every nook and cranny of the city. 

Hearing that an entire convoy had been slaughtered just some miles away from the city gates was already bad news to hear, but together with the fact that the humble scholar son of the Li family had passed in such pitiful and irremediable manner, was the last straw. 

Rumors ran like lit gunpowder, and exploded just as hard. 

Every now and then, Taeyong could hear the murmuring of people in the streets talking about the tragic incident. It weighed his heart down, replaying the image of Minhyun's last moments while his mother cried and all that Taeyong could do was keep the towel on his forehead cold and pretend that he saw the black imprints spreading on his skin. 

He still wondered what that was, but it had no point because he couldn't find a book in the backshop that included information about something similar. 

He busied himself with the reading of a huge book in which he knew he wouldn't find what he was looking for, but at least it kept his mind in a single place and helped him learn more things to avoid a scene like the one in the Li's house happening again. 

Sometimes he thought about the strange nobleman with eyes like black pearls, though about his long, graceful fingers and what he had told him regarding Li Yongqing. Especially about the latter. But then he obligated himself to shake his head and keep going through the text about the procedure of cauterizing blood vessels and its downsides. 

"Good morning, Taeyong!" Greeted Baekhyun as he passed through the pharmacy's door and encountered the younger man sitting behind the solid counter, immersed in his book. It could be the end of the world and Byun Baekhyun would keep being an energetic thunderbolt of optimism, which made Taeyong’s days better and his smile appeared as soon as he felt the mood transferring to him. "What are you doing?"

"Just reading, the pharmacy today looks more like a desertic zone" 

"Can you blame people? Everyone that wants to take care of their relatives or themselves are buying paper talismans, not herbs" 

Taeyong sighed, recognizing the point. 

"I wonder if I should get one myself" 

"Surprise" said Baekhyun with a smile, leaning over the counter to stack a paper with red ink symbols on Taeyong’s forehead. The younger man looked at him with surprise, taking the paper off to check that it was indeed one of aforementioned talismans.

"You got me one?" 

"A ghost repellent. Just in case" said Baekhyun, apparently calm as he tossed a basket that he had been carrying on his back and was full of medicinal flowers. By their long stems and tiny white blossoms, Taeyong guessed they were a new batch of shepherd's purses to treat circulatory problems. Maybe his reading wasn't so in vain. "The other day Kai told me that a few merchants had found an entire convoy of travelers and other merchants shattered and dead in the forest's pass. He said that they managed to take back some corpses to find their families and give them a proper burial…"

He had said everything as if he was just narrating some event in his daily life, the same way he sometimes told Taeyong about his habits or tasks as for example the purchase of a new hair ornament or a new song he had listened to, but the pause that the Doctor Byun made warned Taeyong of the profundity of the matter, for he had sounded somewhat beaten and that was not what his mentor had him accustomed to. 

"And so?" 

"He claimed that it was an unpleasant thing to witness" 

"Really? Did you take a look on any of them?"

"Why would I ask permission for such a thing? I am a doctor for the living, there's not much I can do by bothering a corpse" Taeyong nodded in understanding, swallowing facts little by little as he observed the wood grains of the counter. "But he said that they were light and cold, devoid of soul, as people have been saying" 

Taeyong got a cold chill rolling down his spine, for by all means he didn't find pleasant a peril like being stripped from a soul. 

He clutched the talisman on his hands and slipped it in between the lapels of his blue robe, hiding it near his heart where he probably most needed it. 

"Did you get one for yourself?"

"I'm skeptical" claimed Baekhyun, pulling out an identical paper out of his wide sleeve and waving it in the air. "Not stupid" 

Taeyong chuckled, humored with the silly jokes of his mentor. "It’s good to take care of one's self. Where did you get them? Did they finally call for the help of a sect?"

"I actually got them from a peddler that, in my most honest opinion, is taking advantage of the deluded" commented Baekhyun lightly, plopping on a chair behind the counter, near Taeyong. Although there wasn't much to do at the pharmacy that day, they couldn't close the business at an abnormal hour without previous notice, so they had to wait and see if someone had any request to make. "But it's better to be scammed a few coins than dead"

Taeyong nodded again, not wanting to think about how unworthy the spent money would be if those talismans were fake, weak or even mistaken to cause an adverse effect. 

"I think they should call a sect over, I have heard that those corpses presented very strange markings, or scars... and the situation is overall concerning, it's clearly a spiritual crisis" 

"They did, I heard that from Xuxi. They sent an urgent message for them to come and help, but the closest school of cultivators is at Jianxia, they are going to take some time arriving in the city"

"At least a couple of days more" assented Taeyong. "I hope that everything is alright until then, hope that anyone suffers until then"

"It’s not only you that is preoccupied" sighed Baekhyun, prompting his crossed arms over the counter and lazily flipping the pages of Taeyong’s abandoned book to keep an eye on what his pupil had been consuming. 

He wasn't surprised that Taeyong was pressing himself with new information after the medical tragedy two days prior, the younger man always strived to be better, with a not-so-healthy insistence, sometimes. 

"No?"

"Of course not, Kai was highly apprehensive when I told him the story and said that everything should be extra neat and perfect for the visit of the Prime Minister Taemin, but instead, the tables have turned" narrated Baekhyun. "He said that the higher ranges would pressure him a lot if the visit is a disaster, and that the new Prime Minister is high and mighty, hard to please. He didn't use the word 'arrogant' but you know Kai, so you know that's because he is too benevolent" 

"Arrogant minister and benevolent soldier? Not the best of matches" 

"So much so. Kai would follow the minister wholeheartedly just because of his trust for a governor to be ethical" 

"He would realize eventually, though" said Taeyong in the prefect's defense. 

"Unless it's too late by then" 

"That's true as well" sighed Taeyong.

His attention traveled across the boring pharmacy, still empty from any client, looking for a bigger flake of dust to entertain his look with, or perhaps just a new crack starting to spread on the wall waiting to be fixed, but even that seemed to stay still. 

Then, from the corner of his eye he caught an unusual view through the window. 

The red tassels and strings were swinging from an umbrella as the young man sleekly walked through the district, finely dressed with a black shirt of wide sleeves and red collar and a beautifully decorated skirt of crimson that darkened to burgundy and finally black as it went down to his feet. 

He had remarkable looks, so much that Taeyong could perfectly remember where he had seen him before without a second of doubt. 

What Taeyong most remembered, frankly, were his words, and the goosebumps of his skin when the aristocrat told him the new version of the story that always tickled Taeyong with curiosity and sadness.

_ Li Yongqin _ . 

A lost cultivator that turned to be a wrathful ghost, maybe even a possessed beast from a dark, cursed forest out of human reach. 

Taeyong knitted his eyebrows, losing his silhouette among the crowd as he moved on down the street. 

"Baekhyun" he called, turning around again to see his mentor, who was now almost asleep with his chin tucked on his palm. However, the mentor hummed in response. "What's the appearance of a resentful ghost?"

Baekhyun lifted his head to look at Taeyong just as if he had seen a green dog juggling. 

"Pardon?" He chuckled, mostly puzzled by the question. "What? Are you worried that you'd have to encounter something face to face? Well, then I guess it’s scary, ugly and half rotten"

"What if he is not scary and not ugly?" 

Baekhyun would have laughed right away and friendly mocked Taeyong’s lovely occurrences, but given the context in which they were, he just stared at him and began to feel certainly concerned. 

"What is the ghost in question like, then?"

"No, I'm just thinking" said Taeyong, recognising the drop of Baekhyun's voice. "Do all ghosts have terrifying looks? There are ghosts that can look human, isn't that so?"

"Well" mumbled Baekhyun, pondering about the answer. "You know there are myths about pretty spirits that deceive humans with a natural appearance, like the  _ huli jing _ , or those who steal bodies. But those are the most powerful ghosts, a weak ghost can’t replicate a perfect functioning human, the human body, you know it as a doctor, is very complicated in all its functions and reactions”

“So maybe it’s possible that this ghost that attacked the entourage near the city gates is walking among us?”

“Why are you asking that?”

“Listen up, the ghost was strong enough to kill an entire entourage before anyone could run away, not even Minhyun who was young and sharp. It also took their souls away and made the place drip red blood” he explained, smartly gathering his arguments over the table as if he was debating with a wise elder daring the medic to impress him. Something during the night of two days ago had wounded him deeply and Taeyong still didn’t know about it. “Other than that, he can’t be a slow walking creature like a jiangshi or a crawling creature of some kind, because he was able to move through the forest during the night without being caught or found, so he must be powerful, indeed”

“Our Taeyong is so clear-sighted as always” proclaimed Baekhyun with a chuckle and a smile that passed through the air to Taeyong and made him small with his mindless, tongue-tied state that bubbled inside him with the sweet praises of his mentor. Compliments were always easy to soften Taeyong’s heart to a funny point. "But then, the next question should be, if he is powerful and a fast performer of the calamity, why would he waste time mingling with people like a commoner" 

Taeyong nodded. "That's a good question"

He had a theory for that too, but he didn't want to say it out loud. 

_Because he is waiting for something_. _And when that came, it would be like walking through fire._


	2. Chapter 2

Within a couple of days more, the people of Ru'nan began leaving the initial turmoil aside. 

There wasn’t anyone else that reported a corpse in the proximities, so the panic began lifting up from citizen's hearts and life went back on track. 

The pharmacy gained clients again. Some of them subtly asked if they sold talismans, and very gently, Taeyong had to shake his head no and tell them to wait for the cultivators of the sect to arrive, but they weren't really rushed about it.

As per usual, people came to ask for red ginseng, chamomile, lycium barbarum and other frequently requested medicines. 

The doctor Byun and him also treated with two cases of dehydration due to the late summer, a case of flu with high fever and an impromptu surgery performed to a chef of a restaurant nearby the district because his shelf fell on his head producing a wound that had to be stitched.

Taeyong was good at sewing at that point already, he had closed too many of those wounds. 

Minhyun's funeral was held, stirring a little bit more of uneasiness across the streets, but overall, and without new attacks, people seemed to start forgetting about the ghost issue. 

It was not Taeyong’s case. 

As a starter, the encounter with that odd stranger during his ride back home in the carriage remained in his head. The images of him stuck around his thoughts and constantly returned with the cold burn of his breath crashing on Taeyong’s face as they discussed something as macabre as a possession myth. 

There was something in the dark pool of his black orbs that wasn't completely piecing together with Taeyong’s scheme, but he didn't know who to reach for if he wanted to ask about a stravagant aristocrat that seemed to be new at the city, nor would have he known what questions to make. 

Perhaps he was just being absolutely paranoid about the whole ordeal, accusing, in his mind, someone of not being what he said he was. If he had said it out loud, it would have sounded ridiculous, but he wasn’t quite sure that he had to dismiss that possibility. 

It was a sunny day in the last weeks of August when Taeyong would once more wonder about that young master who was still walking across the streets of the city that had been his home for many years already. 

The medic was sitting at the calm lounge area of the tea house that he most enjoyed, accompanied by the kind and lively presence of Xuxi. 

The elevated terrace with outdoor tables made him feel at ease, allowing him to see the people strolling under him, traveling the streets as he spaced out and imagined what they would be heading to, what they carried on their purses and boxes or what was their life like. 

As for Huang Xuxi, he was a gentle person, soft and loving despite the outer appearance, so Taeyong liked to share the afternoon snack time with him. 

He would be the best practical example of the saying that you can’t judge a flower by its petals, because even Taeyong who wasn’t fast at judging people by the first sight without a proper diagnosis, had felt a bit intimidated at first. 

He was one of the tallest men he had yet encountered, with broad shoulders and potent arms despite the thin build of his waist.

Xuxi, as well, had chestnut colored hair that was kept off his face with a low braid behind his neck, which matched the rich chocolate color on his eyes that could make the most strong-willed maiden surrender to the charm. Or that was before one of them turned white, now only one flaunted the dark color, although the sentiment that charged his gazes was the same. 

The scar that vertically crossed the left eye happened due to an unfortunate incident during a fiery sword fight with a murderer that had to be arrested. Nonetheless, it didn’t strip Xuxi from his ability with women, if anything, they felt even more safe with him after watching the skilful- and in more than one lady’s opinion, electrifying- combat.

They were drawn to the lustiness like moths to a lamp. 

Taeyong though, knew the truth behind that appealing image of the soldier. He knew that the wound had been excruciating back then, more than anything because he was the doctor that took care of it and watched Xuxi’s body twitching and aching, dying to be relieved from the feel that made his eye be veiled with pain. But now Xuxi just wore the scar like a medal of his honorable bravery, and his optimism and confidence filled in for the percentage of utile vision he had lost, not really inhibit him from being one of the most successful precepts at guarding the safety of Ru’nan. 

Taeyong should be in good hands that afternoon, then, in case something happened. 

The worker of the tea house came with an elegant tray, and put the cups on the table, pouring a gentle brew of green tea from an elegantly held teapot that barely bubbled as she served it, creating a lovely stream of calm inducing liquid into the cups before leaving it on the table and abandoning the men at the table to their business. 

Taeyong stared at the transparent, greenish verbiage steaming up from his mug, brooding over something unknown for the precept that just sipped from his, probably exhausted after half a day of work. Those had become more hectic for a police precept in the latter days, trying to prevent panic from spreading and doing damage control actions to ensure the calm environment for the arrival of the Prime Minister Taemin. 

“How has work been lately?” asked the older, almost absentmindedly, finally taking a sip from his tea. “Is there anything new from that case with the unfortunate convoy at the outskirts?” 

“Nothing really. Kai suggested the troop let Baekhyun perform an autopsy to one of the corpses but, of course, no family wanted to let us use the remains of their lost relatives”

“It would be of no use to profane a body for this endeavour”

“Do you think so?”

“I assisted Minhyun in his deathbed, and as much as I dislike to say this being a medic, it wouldn’t have had a remedy. He had an internal hemorrhage, and that was bad, but human. The problem is that he was losing his grip of reality, and his skin started showing those wicked markings, too. I didn't want to say it while the mother was there, mourning him, but he was on the verge of following the rest of the entourage in their mysterious passing. There's no soul, so healing the body is useless”

“But once he passed, he remained more or less an average body, right?”

“Yes, he dodged the absolute loss of his inner essence, at least”

“Then you truly believe that the rest of them, the ones that came later in the cart, were consumed by a course?”

“Yes, I strongly believe that”

“Kai too” he sighed, appearing a bit more languid than his usual self used to be. Of course, those who didn’t ignore the lingering, cold feeling that something was approaching, couldn’t help but to be uneasy, especially when your occupation is avoiding that something breaks through the population. “The moment he saw those bodies in the charriage, he told us we are going to need to be on standby, ready for something big. He said it might be something caused by a _ti shen_ spirit" 

"What's that?" Asked Taeyong curiously. 

After all, Xuxi had lived more years than him in the city and he must know more legends than Taeyong.

"The ghost and creatures that replace their body. The spirit can turn to live in someone else's body" explained Xuxi, as Taeyong gulped down recalling a very particular story he had been told recently. The casualties floated around him like fireflies. "That type of spirits usually seek to conquer over other living person's body by nature"

"But… all these bodies… are _empty._ Why _?_ " 

"I don't really know. Some old wise men say that every essence need the correct vessel, and that every soul has its weight"

"As in… you can't fit a litre of water into an inkwell and you can't fill a bathtub with mist, is that the sense?"

"I guess, but I'm not a priest"

"So there’s something trying to find itself a new shell and killing thousands as it passes? It’s chilling"

"I know, the possibility sounds out of nightmare and also… defeating, but you know I trust Kai as if he was my blood brother”

“Kai knows what he talks about, I wouldn’t doubt him either”

“Sure, it’s just that I hoped you could say something happier to me” said Lucas with longing eyes dropping at the empty cup he held on his hand and that, on his large fingers and palm looked even more fine and small than it really was. “Something that made me think I could do something for the people that is going to die next” 

The medic pursed his lips, lamenting the situation. 

"Maybe you can defend them from that peril" 

Xuxi chuckled in appreciation. "Maybe you can cure them before their souls get stolen" 

He nodded, and both swimmed in the silence for a few minutes more, each of them thinking about their own perspective of the matter and building a rare scenario where those affirmations were true in the mutual company of their encounter. 

Not long afterward, Taeyong shook his white head to make his thoughts shift -perhaps just not so far from the previous way of the topic- and leave another one to come to him, his straight ponytail swinging with the fluent grace that he possessed and was unique from even a doctor. 

“Have you heard of a new young master coming to reside in the city, Xuxi?”

“A new young master? I don’t know, you must be more specific than that, this city is full of noblemen to the brim, the successful merchants are all gathered in the commercial district and all of them deal with a good amount of money too… there are many”

“Just someone who I didn’t know before, that doesn’t seem familiar to my eyes”

“I still don’t know, I haven’t heard rumors about any new aristocratic family moving to Ru’nan, and you know those things can always be heard in the market. Maybe he is someone that was unknown to you before, someone with very good health, that is” joked the younger of the pair, not stating a lie whatsoever. 

“Really? Not a single prattle about it? Maybe not an entire family moved but just a young man. Maybe a scholar, a merchant… even a poet, maybe?”

“Nothing at all” affirmed Xuxi, sure about it. “I didn’t hear people talking about anyone new”

“Then I don’t understand” muttered Taeyong for himself, making his lip pout for the pressure of his fingers under them. 

“What thing? Are you curious about someone? You're not the type to go lurking around the gentlemen of this city”

Taeyong shook his head, knowing that an explanation wouldn’t be useful and not even possible given the tangled state of his thoughts, without rhyme or reason. 

“I just saw someone I didn’t know the other day, so I wondered if I missed something”

“There’s nothing I know about a new citizen, if I listen to something new I’ll tell you, would you like that?”

“Would be useful, but don’t get stressed over it, I guess he was just… another nobleman on a trip. Rich people have money and time to do that”

“How true is that” laughed Xuxi, lifting his cup. “But let’s toast for getting there some day and travel just as much”

“I’m a doctor, Xuxi, people need me here to cure them”

“Think about it like you giving a job spot to someone younger”

“Hey, I’m young!” 

“Now, but when we are done gathering the fortune of noblemen have to travel freely, you’d have started wrinkling like a raisin” he joked, ripping a pout from Taeyong who, for a fact, liked being called pretty and sulked when getting the opposite, just like Xuxi was doing now. “By the other hand I, much younger, will be bright and handsome!”

“Then where are you taking money and range from? It will take you less time?”

“No, but my lovely friend Taeyong, a senior of mine, will contribute”

“Of course not!” complained Taeyong, standing against his friend with an humorous gesture of his tea cup. “You won’t see a coin coming from me after calling me a raisin!” 

The rest of the meeting with his friend, he spent it playing a carefree game of chess against the prefect and trying to not think about the worldly problems that, anyways, as much as he put thought on them would have no remedy coming from his part. 

They talked about the tea flavours, about Baekhyun’s new hobby of composing music at the back of them all despite their actual knowledge about the doctor’s interest in melodies, about the sweet maiden that was making Xuxi’s heart a playground lately and other silly reveeries proper of two friends taking some time off. 

It lasted a short amount of time before Xuxi had to excuse himself and tell Taeyong that the preparations for the upcoming arrival of Taemin had Kai going out of his mind. He wouldn’t get any better if Xuxi presented himself for duty later. An unknown perfectionism had apparently taken over the head of prefects and making him do everything in his hand to cause a positive impression in the minister. 

Taeyong understood the importance of the task in Xuxi’s hands, so he wouldn’t even think about whining about the early departure of his friend. 

However, he still had time to spare before returning to the pharmacy with Baekhyun, who was handling the clients at that hour and could do perfect without Taeyong for half an hour more, so the medic allowed himself to have the pleasure of strolling through the market after a while. 

Ru’nan had many merchants that came to sell their items, and there was barely a spawn of a few days without someone new arriving to offer something different from before, so it was always interesting to take a look every other week to find some trinket and playthings of one’s liking.

Taeyong once had regalled himself with an intricate fan that was still a delight for him. It was a round, rigid fan made of woof and fine silk that garnished the handle with a carved dragonfly and decorated the leaf of the item with an arrangement of pink and silver roses climbing around the borders. Even some hanging chains hung from one of the flowers, drawing a rain of dropping crystals. It was a bit flamboyant and more hard to manipulate, but Taeyong loved it by heart as he really appreciated looking pretty and being thought about as gorgeous. 

Despite no one really reminding him of that.

The first thing that caught his eye when he arrived at the place was a well known stand that sold wind chimes and sometimes came in to display the pretty models of bells. Those were some luxury wind chimes made of metal and gems, some had crystal glasses even, but they were perfect and delicate, and always made Taeyong’s eyes sparkle.

Wind chimes were always a good possession for a medic to get, for they warned about strong winds and with those, the spread of diseases were always growing. Thus, they were useful for Taeyong. 

And Baekhyun too. 

Taeyomg thought about himself buying a pretty wind chime for his mentor and surprising him with a gift box. He thought about the expression of his hazel eyes glowing with the thrill of being in front of a wonder, the smile of his small lips once he lifted the lid to discover a glass bell with the beautiful thread of cilindric glass around it to decorate it, crafted with care to draw white fishes on the glass, with red imprints of sea waves in the paper tag that would swing from the frame of their window. 

A wisp of wind made them throw a sound in an escalated canon, from the one at the right to the last one hanging at the far end of the stand in front of the craftsman waiting to pick one up and show it properly to the daydreaming eyes of Taeyong, stopped in front of it. 

However, his attention flew away with the blow of wind, floating lightly towards a red mess of tassels hanging from a paper umbrella as the man that carried it seemed to be checking out a stand full of perfumes and fragrances, displayed in a flashy range of colored bottles of all sizes and tastes. 

Taeyong, who wasn’t an avid collector of smells by no means -for his nose found perfumes too strong and asphyxiating at times, so his interest veered in another direction- found himself leaving the wind chimes stand for a later visit to cross the crowd like an arrow, inclined to make himself informed of the truth with an unexpected passion. 

Midway through the segment of space that separated them, Taeyong wondered what he was actually planning to do to make such a clash work. 

Perchance he could subtly pretend his shoulder bumped against the young master's own and excuse himself to spark a conversation without forgetting to be attentive of his appearance wavering with the contact, maybe discovering it was all a glamour spell, not strong enough to mimic the complicated human appearance with perfection. 

He even played with the idea of taking his new talisman out and sticking it on his back, waiting for an explosion of flames and smoke that reduced him to a bubbling puddle of black slime. 

Albeit it the end he just faked some interest on perfumes and took the first little frask that he reached at the stand, reading in the tag that hung from the neck that it was nothing less than orchid extract with cinnamon notes. 

He did not care about the luxury of the item anyway, just lifting his view to the man by his side and doing his best to fake surprise. 

"Oh, good evening, sir. Seems like our paths converge once more" 

The stranger looked up from the bottle he had picked with a disinterest proper of someone who wasn’t unaware of Taeyong's new coming presence. 

Taeyong wondered for a single second if he could _feel_ him. 

His eyes, once again, ripped a chill from the medic when they sat on his face from behind the loose strands of black hair longing to graze his sophisticated countenance. 

"Greetings, we meet yet again" 

"Enjoying the buzz of the market mid afternoon?" 

"You could say so" 

"Good choice, right?" Said Taeyong, kindly smiling to the man. 

If his conjectures were right, he should have been terrified, and in fact, the mere fact that they existed should have kept him away from the man, but a part of Taeyong wasn’t scared. Not enough to run away, that was clear, because he kept walking on his trail as the nobleman moved towards the next shop. 

"I have noticed that I was clumsy the first time we met, and because I was deeply attentive to our conversation, I rudely forgot to ask for your name. Would you have a name, sir?" 

The aforementioned looked at him lazily. He appeared even bothered by the insistence of Taeyong to reel yet another conversation but it was still devoid of the classic disdain of some high class members that stared down at Taeyong with a mixture of pity and scorn. 

It was more as if he enjoyed solitude and Taeyong had privated him of it. 

"Would I?” he said with a beguiling curl of his lips that took Taeyong with his guards down in the brief moment it lasted. “Every person is bound to this world with a name" 

Taeyong pursed his lips, thinking that indeed, only an intruder of their realm would walk around without a name. 

"And what would that be for the young master?" 

For the unexpected gratification of Taeyong, a smirk unraveled at the man's lips, tasting playful and astute. 

"Why would I say it if you didn't tell me yours first?" 

"I'm Taeyong, I work at the pharmacy that's further down the commercial district. I'm the pupil of Doctor Byun" 

"A doctor. Very respectable job"

“Thank you”

“It wasn’t a praise, just a fact” smirked the man, clearly fooling around with Taeyong’s meek way with words, not harsh enough to pretend he had a strong resilience in front of consideration. 

But the medic had presented himself suddenly and blatantly, so he could not speak about the level of trust among them to joke like that or not, because he too had jumped over it. 

"You shouldn't be sharing so much information of yourself like it’s nothing" 

"You asked me"

"I said" corrected the man, lifting an annoying finger. "That it's not fair to ask for a name not willing to say yours first, because I know the importance of my name. I didn't-"

"Names are just words" interrupted Taeyong.

"Just words?" He asked, a faint laugh escaping his red lips and Taeyong’s hands clenching at the sensation it brought up. The airy sound settled in him and disordered his calm. "If you say so…"

“What’s a name if not?”

“A tool”

“If a name was a tool, then it would need to have an ulterior purpose, apart from naming things, of course”

“You like to debate things, uh?”

“Yes. So what’s the purpose of a name then?”

“I just told you, _Taeyong_.” he said, purposefully letting his name roll off his tongue. “That everyone is bound to this world with a name. In these days where the roads are not safe and everyone gets a hold on talismans and spells, do you really want to be permissive with your spills of information?”

“Well, but… since I told you mine, it’s only fair to know yours, and I will be cured of preoccupation”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“If you use my name for wicked purposes, I could wield yours as a weapon to defend myself, no?”

“I guess you could _try_ ”

"So? What's your name?" Insisted Taeyong again, trying to extract the slightless amount of information from the stranger. 

He sighed and then chuckled, moving a strand of loose hair away from his face. 

"If you are so interested, my name is Ten" 

Taeyong was, at that moment, not very sharp to conceal the fast blink of his eyes. 

"What is it, Doctor? Were you expecting to hear something different?"

The medic shook his head and forced out a smile. 

"It’s a pretty name" he mumbled with courtesy, making the man look at him sideways. 

For some reason, Taeyong felt clumsy around his splendid mannerism, just as the time when they first met, yet he wasn't embarrassed to a disastrous degree. Besides mysterious, Ten’s personality wasn't bad. 

He had met worse people before. 

Those who scrunched his nose when they knew he had no money, the ones that refused to be examined by a learning doctor, the ones whose gesture became slanted with the knowledge of Taeyong’s tastes… and for sure, the egocentric and mean people that centered their character around their quality of being specially miserable. 

The world was full of people that were infinitely worse. 

Mayhap he really misjudged the man that had now stopped to stare at a stand filled with kites for children. 

There were goldfishes of all colors, a turtle, a dragonfly, a tiger, colorful birds of all shapes and even a blue bat made with a patterned paper. 

Taeyong examined the models with curiosity. He was yet to achieve more goals in his life to get his money sack full, so as a kid, he had not owned a kite as colorful as the ones hanging from there, not the complicated hair ornaments that they next encountered in a stand settled by a goldsmith.

His eyes lined the shape of a jade hair needle with lovely hanging tassels and beads that finished the edge of the swinging chains with pink enamel roses. He ate the item with his vision, thinking about how good it would match his favorite fan. 

Sometimes Taeyong fantasized with things like wearing all his best clothes and going to sit around to a private concert or to a dinner gathering. 

His reputation had gone up a lot since he arrived in Ru'nan by himself to pursue his chosen goal as an independent adult, but he still wasn’t renowned enough to be invited to those events.

“What is it? Do you like this one?” asked the man, picking up the hair ornament that had Taeyong gapping and tending it to him with a natural move. Still, his hand traced a libless pattern that made the pin’s decoration twinkle and look even prettier between the long, shiny points of his silver nail decorations than they were while laying on the table. 

Taeyong felt a ridiculous -yet undeniably present- flower bloom on his chest.

The goldsmith behind the stand, of course, didn't dare to complain about a person with Ten’s demeanour picking an item up to consider it, unlike it could have happened if he had done it himself. 

Taeyong started a move to take it from his hand, offering it all for him, and the pad of his index traced the enamel flower’s petal as delicate as if it was a real rose, but he very quickly withdrew his hand and clutched it around the lapel of his tunic. 

“I... It’s beautiful, but I can’t afford it. Well, I can, but it wouldn’t be a smart purchase”

“Is that so?”

“I’m not overly wealthy, so it would be a caprice. I could use money more smartly” 

“How thoughtful” proclaimed the noblemen, leaving the ornament back in its previous place. “I thought the city was dressing up and embellishing themselves for the governor’s visit”

“I have more pretty things at home, I can pick any other when it’s time to garnish myself”

“Well, that surprises me”

“Does it?” inquired the medic, surprised himself by the sudden -and vehement sounding- declaration from Ten’s part. “And why is that? Is that I don’t look like someone who is in possession of a humble but adequate collection of ornaments?”

“That’s not what I suggested. I simply thought that all men would be trying their best to dance attendance on the prime minister. In other words, I thought you would join the adulation”

“Well, I’m more likely to just expect to be enough by myself, and that I can't get it through hairpins”

"That's…" Ten seemed to take a moment to weigh his words properly, unlike any other action Taeyong had witnessed from his part so far until that moment. "Valuable by itself, but more so when someone that looks like you do says it" 

"That looks like me?" 

There was a silent glance from Ten, giving the meaning to the medic by the act of soundless speech turned once-over. 

If Taeyong got that meaning right, his cheeks had a reason to flush. 

The swinging tassels from the umbrella drew patterns on Ten’s face as well, as he stood under it religiously when he gave a long stare at Taeyong, as if wondering where he came from.

That was, in the medic’s opinion, sarcastic due to Ten’s unusualness itself. 

"Do you always carry this umbrella?" Taeyong asked, eyes briefly checking the floor beneath their feet to search for the shadow that the item created over the place where his own projection should have been.

"It’s summer, I don’t fancy burning my skin" he simply replied, moving on from the stand's front to keep strolling through the market. 

Taeyong’s steps were agile and nimble behind him, reaching a hand out to take a hold of the umbrella's handle just above the nobleman's smooth hand, just brushing his skin lightly. 

Ten stopped with an elegant movement and tilted his head to the side to look at Taeyong with an expression that threw the smile through his smug eyes instead of curling up his lips. 

"Are you trying to find yourself some clients, doctor? Sunburns and dehydration states are known to be serious, you must know" 

"Can I carry it for you, sir?" 

The slightly shorter man locked eyes with him, and for a short moment, Taeyong could swear there was a dancing light of dazzled awe in the black inkwell of his eyes. It was quickly swallowed back into the dark void, and afterwards, he let out an airy sound of amusement, eyes averting from Taeyong. 

A part of him believed it was a sign of mocking, but next, he let go of his loyal accessory and bent his arm to rest a hand behind his back.

"If you insist" 

It surprised Taeyong greatly that he had ceded. He could, easily, pull the umbrella away and uncover them both with a simple movement of his hand so there were a few options happening in his quick mental process. 

The first one would be that he was innocent and Taeyong was just working and endeavouring too much in making a fool of himself. 

The second one would consist in the lack of preoccupation the man had in front of the possibility of being played by Taeyong, whose powers to put up a fight against an unknown force were equal to zero. 

And the last of the options, very unlikely to happen but also worthy of consideration, is that Ten _trusted_ him to not do it. 

The sneer tugging from his lips didn't help the medic with the interpretation of the signals. 

Taeyong gave a quick glance to the floor again, trying to check if there was just a slit of space uncovered by the natural swing of the umbrella as they pushed through the market. 

"Allow me to say that, in my life, I have known a few of the most irreverent people of the country, and you are yet the worst one" Ten said each one of the words like a prayer in which he deeply believed, creating a dumbfounded state to pop inside the medic that looked at the aristocrat's regaled face agape. "You offer yourself to carry my umbrella but can't look higher than my feet? Where are your manners?" 

Taeyong knitted his eyebrows, annoyed without notice at the smiley tone that accentuated all the words of the other man. He was pleasing himself toying around with the medic, and that wasn't fair in the slightless. 

Not when his face heated up in front of a stranger for no logical reason. 

"What are you intending to tell me?"

"You cornered me during a summer evening, had the effrontery of asking me for my name, and then requested my permission to carry my umbrella; after all the boldness I at least expected you to be able to politely look at me in the eyes"

"I was polite in all my questions and you are protesting? You are of higher range, I was being _kind_ to you with my offering, nothing else"

"Oh? Then is the awkwardness attacking your gentleman tendencies? Should I pretend I'm a maiden then? Perhaps that makes you feel less ill at ease" he commented batting his lashes and with eyes that caressed Taeyong in an impossible manner. He was going to turn pink of vexation any moment with such impolite comments. The next input, blown in just a low breath was the last straw. "Unless you like it better with a man"

All the muscles at Taeyong’s back stiffened, and the baby hairs at his nape felt crisp. 

He was angered, but Xuxi had always told Taeyong that his tantrums only got to look adorable. 

His eyes pierced through Ten with an irritable glance, jaw clenched almost as hard as the hand that gripped around the umbrella's handle with the knuckles turning white.

"You know what? Carry it yourself" he spat, shoving the item back onto Ten’s hand with just a touch of their fingers before Taeyong turned around to go. 

He opened his eyes wide just when his back faced the nobleman, realising what he had done, but it was too late to swallow his pride and back up. 

“Don’t sulk, doctor! It wasn’t that bad!”

Without really knowing how, he had handed the umbrella back to Ten and left him behind.

Such an odd man, where did he come from? What did he want? What was his ambition? Why was Taeyong so unable to just turn the page and call their coincidental meet over? 

Taeyong did not possess an answer for those questions, so in his mind he pushed them away and tried to not spit venom over the pile. 

He pushed through the door of the pharmacy, obviously empty handed and without the wind chime he had been thinking about, finding his mentor dispatching orders to clients like everyday, as if nothing had ever happened. 

Maybe it was better to pretend there wasn’t something rearranging his brains, like everyone else seemed to do. 

He called up the ma'am waiting next in the line and asked what he was looking for at the pharmacy. She, at once, gave Taeyong her crooked look of slight displeasure for having to deal with the flimsy pupil and not the reputed Doctor Byun, but followed him to the counter and described her daughter's symptoms while Taeyong wrote them down on a paper with enviable calligraphy to measure and mix a suitable medicine. 

When both of the medics had been done attending the people that gathered in their pharmacy, Baekhyun yawned and stretched his arms above his head, moving his cramped muscles to avoid future pain. 

"Everything is getting back on track, thanks Gods" 

"I have met an eccentric aristocrat recently" said Taeyong, getting back at what seemed to have started to be his new obsession.

"Those two words, eccentric and aristocrat, tend to be tied"

"But he doesn't behave like other people from the high-class I've met before”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. He is different, and I just wonder where he came from. I have no news of any family moving here. I asked Xuxi too, but he said he didn't know any rumor either"

"If a prefect hasn't heard about it then it doesn't exist, especially lately, when everything is under the unbending hand of Kai and his eager heart to make this city a prime minister utopia" he said, faking an ominous voice to mock his good friend. Taeyong laughed in unison with him, starting to think that Kai needed a pat on his back. "We too work in a pharmacy where all idle elders gather to speak, and I don't have the slightless idea of who you talk about. What's his name?"

"Ten"

"Ten? How informal, what’s with his family name? Well, it doesn't matter, it doesn't sound familiar either way" 

"I thought so" 

"Is not like we have time for gossip, anyways" sighed Baekhyun, getting up with a smile to hand a broomstick to his pupil. "Let’s get this place clean, thoroughly. I have organised the back store and the counter. Now you sweep the floors and I clean the windows. Clean the entrance too, we are going to give Kai a lighter state of mind for when the minister arrives in two days"

"Two days? Is that the definitive date of Prime Minister Taemin's arrival?" 

"That's what he said, and he is becoming annoying so we better do something before I slip a tranquilliser in his tea to shut him up" 

Taeyong just ended up nodding and taking the broom to go clean the store, joining the adulation train that he had earlier discussed with this Ten man -if that was his real name- and questioning himself for forgetting to ask his family name, his occupation, or just something that would take a liar more than two minutes to elaborate. 

He wasn’t to blame, Ten would have probably come up with something to say even if that was the case. 

At least, that day Taeyong wasn’t doomed to go back home by himself, as Baekhyun said he would join him on the way after work. There was no reason to keep hanging around after the pharmacy closed, for Kai was way too overwhelmed with work and the other option was going out to fetch some bottles of liquor, but since that also could end up causing a ruckus that would own Baekhyun a scolding and the beating of his ass for complicating things, he declined the idea. 

Taeyong always enjoyed the idea of a calm stroll at the break of dawn spent by Baekhyun’s side. Even if they were silent and had nothing to talk about in that exact moment, the quietude of the night and the pale glow of the moonlight was enough to make the trust expand into a bubble of warmth that made his heart feel milder. 

It was just like his thoughts of the wind chimes and the pool of bashfulness that accumulated inside him when Baekhyun praised his improvements with reading symptoms or the accuracy of his stitches; something that calmed his mind. 

With the nice prospect, Taeyong left the pharmacy at the latest hour of the afternoon with his mentor after they had finished immobilizing the broken bone of a kid that had fallen down the tea house’s stairs. 

He was excited, even, a small spark cracking inside his chest and threatening to make him blush.

They ambled through the main street of the commercial district, unrushed and almost as if they didn’t feel like parting yet. At either side, the colorful buildings made of wood and stone arose with the homely view of a bustling town full of energy and determination. 

Taeyong loved that it never seemed to sleep and was always there for any wandering soul going through a hard time. The constructions were eternal, or at least they looked strong enough to make him believe that regardless of the eventual blotches of chipping paint that fell from those stores that were more modest than the local bank, the highest ranked restaurants and the other business parlors with high income. 

There were still many people walking up and down, heading to their destinations without paying much mind about the excellence of the environment that Taeyong was enjoying, branding it as one more thing of their daily lives. A crowd of women were chorting at the story that an auntie was telling them, all of them happy and careless with the youth bubbling in their blood like bells. A few small children were playing around a pond, trying to catch the few gold fishes that were swimming around. 

Everything seemed to be as happy as any other day, so much that Taeyong even felt a distant nostalgia caused by a tiny hole inside his chest, perhaps doomed to grow bigger. 

The lamps had begun blooming with the vibrancy of the colored paper of their screens as they lit up, seeming like they accompanied Taeyong’s steps, throwing light to his feet. 

With this scenery, Taeyong wouldn’t have minded arriving a bit later to his home that night. 

His house was unpretentious, just about proper; and even when he craved to have the rice with king crab he was having in mind, getting tangled in a state of mild dishevel for a hypothetical fancy of his mentor wasn't an unpleasant thought either. 

He might have been a little bit caught up on his mind bobbing a reel of possible fictions, but maybe it was that capricious and nefarious spike of his fate that didn’t let him slip by the place where Xuxi was keeping his watch of the streets without noticing the rare image of Ten without his loyal umbrella. 

He pursed his lips, thinking what could be the motive that brought those two together to converse like they were doing, but then he waved it away, knowing it had no point to get proprietorial over his discovery. He reckoned that it was the time for a clumsy prefect to take notice of the new, eccentric aristocrat of the city. Maybe Ten was just that, someone who collected a lot of perfumes and lived on a grand scale in a new residence close to the capital.

Taeyong sighed, tugging from Baekhyun's attention, his mouth shaped on a gentle smile.

"You look nostalgic, what's going on inside that overworking head" 

Taeyong smiled and shrugged, a bit timid. He worked the long blond strand of his hair around his fingers, still peeping at the noble before they left him behind with their walk. 

"The night looks pretty, it makes me feel a little bit emotional" 

"You are just like that, isn't it?" Grinned the older doctor. "Always seeing the world with so much love. I wish I could be like that"

That made Taeyong embarrassed. It was true that he still had the hope for kind people, that he had known so many barbaric idiots during his life and still focused on the glimmers of benevolence. Maybe it was naive, but he wanted to believe that humanity wasn't at lost completely and that there would be a farmer that offered him a ride on his carriage or a nobleman that brought a luxurious pin over for him to see it well without being scowled at by the merchant. 

Taeyong only fancied a little bit of a loving gesture, what people call consideration. 

"It's not always good, being like this costs me a few disappointments every month" 

"But you hold out against everything, that was my point" 

"I try, I just aspire to be proved right sometime"

“Right about what?”

“About the world holding some kindness to give to me”

“What a time to say that, Taeyong. Weren’t you so positive about a ghost being out there for a rampage this morning?”

“I still stand my point, but people die everyday, so precisely because of that I just need to hold onto something that tells me there’s moments that are worth it and people that are not going to spit on my face and fuss because I’m the son of a farmer and a carpenter” 

“Is it so? Then I'm sure you will be proven right soon. Or I hope so"

“So do I”

Taeyong pressed up a smile, feeling fulfilled for the rest of the night and carrying on with their silent walk out of the commercial district, just being side by side in the complicity of their friendship. 

Midway through the way, Baekhyun waved goodbye to him and went into his home, and Taeyong, unrushed, dragged his steps for them to be slower, looking at the night sky. 

When you expect a splinter of hope that remains in the darkness of humanity, you have to look everywhere thoroughly just so you don't miss the tiny sparkle of something passing by you like a breath. 

The shock of an upcoming impact would visit Taeyong just with the sunlight of a new day. 

The clouds from a summer storm had been gathering around the sky, but the luminity still pushed through the spotless windows of the pharmacy. 

Taeyong had taken a moment in his early walk towards the store to check if the wind chimes seller was having plans of showing up that day as well, finding with happiness that it was the case and counting the coins on his purse to take one for his mentor. 

With the tidy and streamly clean look of the pharmacy, the bell would look so picturesque at the door, the sound calming with just the slow wind of almost September. Thus, he decided that he would show up at the market during his break at mid evening and brood over the stand for a while trying to decide which one he should purchase. 

With a little bit of shame he, as well, wondered if he would see Ten again there. Maybe without the umbrella this time to see his radiant face clearly and discover if his black hair was glossy under the sun as it cascaded down to his hips. 

The intrusive thought swirled around his mind for a bit, together with the wind pipes designs before all of it dissipated to let him focus on his self imposed lesson about theoric medicine.

After the shock at Minhyun's house, but with the nerves more settled after a few days from his burial, he was reading about the practice bloodletting and its high percentage of risk, proving that his mentor's words and advice to the Li family had been correct, as expected. He wanted to know more, learn a bit everyday and become someone like the Doctor Byun that, on another note, was absent because he had gone to a lord's house to attend a fever case from his first-born.

At noon, he finally got his attention brought back to reality when a literal train of women crossed the door of the pharmacy dragging in a very embarrassed young maiden. 

Taeyong guessed the matter straight away just by the look of the scene, and upon hearing the first few symptoms that the women were vaguely describing to him, a man, he decided to spare the mortification to the kid and give them a sack of safflower and ginger mix to make tea, recommending warmth and rest for better results. 

He was lucky to be free from menstrual pains, they sounded like a nightmare every time. 

As they left, the door didn’t have time to close again ahead of the abrupt entrance of the head of the police prefects. 

Taeyong perfectly knew that Kai wasn’t someone he should fear at all, if anything, being around this man in particular would make him know he is walking besides the most adequate person to feel safe. Yet, the painting that his face was depicting in that moment was enough to make the medic knit his eyebrows. 

"Good evening, Kai, it is good to see you again, my friend. Is there something I can do for you? Baekhyun is visiting a patient but you know you can trust me with anything" 

"In fact, I was looking for you" 

"For me? Well, that's specific and… unexpected" said Taeyong with an awkward half smile, scratching the back of his blonde head. Kai had never doubted Taeyong, nor his skills, but for most cases where medics were needed, he reached for his childhood friend as it was logical. "What is it about?"

The man took two long strides towards Taeyond and leaned in with his hands on the counter. 

He was wearing the red and white clothes from the prefects under the leather plates of his armour, all embedded with metal decorations and buckles. His face was glazed with sweat and sprayed with dust. All the same, his short hair was messy, and only the mesh band on his forehead kept the strands from falling onto his eyes.

The tiredness was evident in his features, especially on his eyes. Nonetheless, it was not like he was screaming for help. Not yet. The seriousness in which he always took his job, and the care that he was willing to put into his duty for the Prime Minister Taemin battled the laid back, cheerful persona he became when off-duty. 

"Have you seen Xuxi?"

Taeyong felt appalled by the unexpected question, surprised and barely able to numble. "Pardon?"

"Huang Xuxi, he is running late to his shift and this is not the moment for such a thing. He knows it, and that fact makes me worry even more. Have you seen him today, Taeyong? You are friends" 

He opened his mouth and found himself speechless. 

The last place he had seen him suddenly made him want to gulp. 

Maybe it would serve him better to run all the way to the wind chimes stand, buy his favorite one before every glass and window of Ru'nan busted, rip the paper tag that hung from it and replace it with the talisman hidden under his shirt to hang it on their window. 

"I last… I… _no,_ I haven’t" managed Taeyong, finally, not finding the proper words inside him. 

It could have been just whatever. Xuxi could have fallen asleep under a three again, he could be taking a carefree break in the stressing works tangled on the skirt of his beloved to just make Kai settle down a bit once he arrived and the older one proved that the world wouldn’t fall apart if he didn’t whip even the tiniest of dust flakes into regency for the Prime Minister. 

Until he was proved wrong, Taeyong’s stubbornness would remain. 

“Yesterday we went out for tea, he told me that work was exhausting these days, maybe he is just breathing… taking a break and recharging”

“I know he is tired, I am too” sighed Kai, rubbing his hands over his face, almost defeated. “But we just have to be strong for just a few days more, stronger than ever, yes, but it’s our duty…”

“Is the Prime Minister really arriving tomorrow?” 

“At noon, maximum” replied the older man with a firm nod and a voice that betrayed his preoccupation mixing into his tenacity. “And this town is going to be ready, because I’ll make sure. I’ll make sure taxes don’t rise for us just because there’s a peril scaring trades to come from our roads, I’ll make sure that no family gets their business closed because of a fraudulent endeavour or a mess with bureaucracy. I will have Taemin coming here and finding that there’s nothing out of place” 

“It’s an ambitious enterprise, Kai” 

“But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to abandon it”

“What if the Prime Minister is not like you think he should be?” he asked undertone, voicing the preoccupation that he had been discussing with Xuxi and Baekhyun in their previous meeting, perchance expecting some little flicker in his friend’s intranquility, or maybe just needing Kai to be calmer so he could inoculate some tranquility in Taeyong’s mind as he grew unsettled by the fast cycle of changes that had been going on during the last days. 

“And how is he supposed to be?”

“I don’t know, I haven't met him, and I don’t think I personally will”

“Then we can’t risk it” sentenced Kai, making it clear that Xuxi’s suppositions the day prior had been right. That only made Taeyong wish that Taemin would turn out to be the brightest sunflower of the lands so Kai wouldn’t find himself all pricked with the thorns of a guileful rose or, in a worse scenario, a dewberry bush. “If you find Xuxi hiding around, send him back to me immediately, he is not going to avoid the reprimand”

“Be comprehensive with him, he is young and kind, I don’t think he means bad”

“I know, but there’s no excuse to avoid his shift. Send him to me if you see him”

Taeyong nodded and let Kai go like that. 

It was only when a few minutes slipped that Taeyong abruptly stood up from his chair behind the counter and ran towards the window that faced the wide space of the main street of the district. 

He couldn’t pinpoint that well what he was looking for or expecting to see, but it was most probably just a shade of semi-transparent red projected over silky black hair and smooth skin by the act of red rice paper. 

He was going absolute insane as the realisation hit him and he understood that something abnormal was happening, a sentiment growing in him just by the memory of Ten’s deep stare and the impertinent curl of his lip’s seams. 

What was that coming from? Is that he was so deprived of affection that a couple of clement stares worked his heart up? 

There was a saying -maybe present in his mind because he heard a loose verse of a scholar during a tea serving, maybe written with charcoal at the margin of a book- that said that those who don’t get a spoonful of what they crave, end up licking it up from a knife.

However, it was Baekhyun’s face that appeared behind the window with a sudden mood and a silly expression that startled Taeyong as much as to screech loud enough to make the wood of the pharmacy’s walls shake. He then knitted his eyebrows, annoyed, while Baekhyun leaned back arching his spine as he was thrown towards the rear by his own laughter. 

“What are you doing, scaredy kitty cat?” he joked as he pushed through the door and received Taeyong’s pout of frustration shooting back at him. “What did you lose out there?”

“Nothing, really” he mumbled, going back to the chair he had been occupying. “Kai paid a visit and part of his distress washed over to me with that whole Prime Minister Taemin ordeal” 

“Ah, yes, he has gone insane over that man and he still knows him from letters only”

“Oh? He actually knows him then?”

“From letters” repeated Baekhyun again, finger pointing out to make his point go through. “Of course, he is the head of this city’s precepts, he is in contact with the higher rank that tosses him around”

“Then he actually knows a bit of his heart”

“How big can knowledge be by theory? As a medic, I say none”

“Still, without a book about anatomy you don’t proceed to a surgery”

“I guess that’s true too” chuckled the older of the pair, flopping on his chair as he nodded. “You could defeat a scholar’s debate skills”

Taeyong chuckled, opening his book again just to make a statement. Although shy sometimes, he was well aware of his efforts in studying and he could as well recognise when he was worthy of affirming he was a smart man. 

“And is this Lord Taemin as renowned as the whole town is making him to be?” 

“Isn’t every governor?” 

“Not inherently” 

“I differ in this one” spurred Baekhyun. “A governor has the power, that’s what they do. So after all, you and I will wear the sleekest clothes we own tomorrow, we will come around with wide sleeves even if we spend the whole day serving medicine with slow, gracious moves to put them out of the way; the tea parlours will brew tea especially careful, and Kai would be at his best behaviour with his whole troop. That’s what I know, because with power, anyone is renowned, remember that” 

For once, Baekhyun’s statement _did_ contradict Taeyong’s beliefs. And although he did not part his mouth to speak, that bothered him. 

He thought that there were things that matter more than the social power of a governor. He was a medic, after all, and he knew that there were things that didn’t forgive even a monarch. 

Alas, he nodded, putting his convenient tone into the humm that accompanied it. 

The next day, fulfilling the expectations of an entire city, he woke up and stopped in front of the big, round mirror framed with noble timber -one of the first things he had purchased with his salary as a medic when he moved to the city about seven years ago- ready to dress up with his finest clothes. 

He couldn’t go as far as if he was about to attend a party, but it was only proper to at least wear something he could use for a lantern festival or a formal tea serving. 

He braided some strands of his blonde hair too, pulling them back with the rest of the wafts as he tied a neat looking, high ponytail. He immediately thought about the hairpin that he had been staring at a couple of days prior and the precious look it would give to his updo. 

By the by, a wisp of cold air coiling behind his ear took back the eccentric aristocrat’s words about adulation. Taeyong chuckled under his breath for the reminiscence, knowing that, out loud, he would never admit that the statement made him amused due to the sharp audacity hidden under Ten’s velvety voice. 

He wondered if someone as off-centered as the man seemed to be, would show up wearing rags just to make someone pop a vein on their necks, but then a chill went down his bare spine as a second thought clouded over his brain and told him Ten might be more than just dary. 

Taeyong blamed his eyes of liquid charcoal for anything that crossed his mind belonging to that lane. Even if Ten wasn’t there to show him the taste of the air when he moved around, it was clearly his fault for Taeyong to be giddy. 

There was absolutely no reason to feel like that. Not one that Taeyong, a lonely and almost-verging-into-introverted medic living at the periphery of a bustling city could remember. 

He picked up his favorite fan and left. 

It just… When he arrived at the town's center, it all felt like a normal day for Taeyong. 

It was a bit disappointing, deep down, as if he actually had been expecting someone to make him stand corrected and prove that the day was indeed ominous, yet the medic only encountered the same city. 

Maybe _he_ was the problem.

He felt the same, no big thrills nor nerves because he was supposed to hear the distant bustling of conversation when the Prime Minister arrived; while everyone else was looking a little brighter than usual. 

By the time he arrived at the pharmacy’s den, Baekhyun was already rushing towards him and taking Taeyong by his elbow, dragging him back outside. 

"Let’s watch the palanquin pass" said the older, cheerfully. 

"We shouldn't leave, there's people that will need medicine today" argued Taeyong as he was being dragged up the street by his mentor. “It doesn’t matter how eventful the day is, sickness will be there”

"It’s going to be a moment, and everyone is there to see, anyway" 

"I don't know, Baekhyun, what if they have an emergency?" 

"Don't be so stressed, Taeyong, we'll just peep and go back to the store" 

He sighed and blinked, watching the passing people by their side that, by the other hand, didn't seem to notice the two men moving forwards or, more likely, not paying attention. 

The street felt narrower with the crowd, cobbled with the same stones as always, bracketed with the same buildings that threw their shade on Taeyong’s face as he looked up to the slither of sky above, concealed by the vibrantly colored flags that decorated the balconies on that day, flapping in the wind.

He felt like the sun was darkening, the wind whooshing and messing with his hair, charming like a cool, refreshing caress. 

"Have you seen Xuxi?" Asked Taeyong, intrigued, as Baekhyun let go of him to move between the sea of people they encountered as they arrived at the widest street. 

"What? Taeyong, what are you talking about? Are you that nervous?" Chuckled Baekhyun, blissfully unaware of a peril that Taeyong was finding quite imminent. He couldn’t say why, but he felt his chest clenching and the air stilling. "He must be walking down the streets with his hand on the sword's handle!" 

"Baekhyun, wait!" 

He listened to some angry exclamations as he accidentally bumped against a woman. He bowed politely and apologized but he was basically shoved away by the arms of crowding people.

Taeyong scrunched his nose, growing upset and displeased with the event, and if that wasn’t bad enough, Baekhyun had been swallowed by the tumult, leaving Taeyong alone in the middle of that madness. 

But there was a small opening in the crowd from which he could see the distant vision of Prime Minister Taemin. 

After all, he ended up there, doing like all the other citizens.

Taeyong had a lonely glimpse only before his short stature was pushed to a side, but the Prime Minister didn’t look too humble. He was surprisingly young for someone that had acquired the title he held, with puffy lips and ashy blonde hair, motionless as a statue as his people moved the palanquin. 

Taeyong started feeling like someone was digging a whole in his chest and despite being small at first, it grew more by the seconds.

He heard the wind chimes somewhere in the market, and then they paused unnaturally. 

It was so auspicious. 

A merchant scowled at him, urging Taeyong to move so he could pass through the street and go to his selected location, probably thought much carefully to stand in a spot where everyone could see his products while attending the eventful parade that Taemin's arrival had become. 

The medic tiptoed back, barely dodging people at that point, and he dropped his fan. 

He gasped in horror, squatting down to save his most beloved item before anyone could step on it and destroy it, falling on his butt with the incessant pace of impatient people growing improper to steal a peek from the governor. 

" _Fuck_ , people can be so insufferable!" He grunted, still bending down, brushing the dust off his fan and checking that the flowers were intact. Then, for more injury, something liquid dripped on his cheek, and his tongue clicked with force and disgust. "Be careful I'm-" 

He had only started his sentence when he felt the heavy fall of a man in his fifties dropping to the floor like a dead weight, making the doctor jolt in surprise as he stared speechless and a violent, frigid shiver sipped through his body.

Taeyong opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again not finding the words in himself. He felt like everything stopped, like no one was even moving or noticing a full grown man had just fallen face down onto the floor.

The truth is that his reactions were just piling up inside him so fast that he could barely process that just a few seconds had passed. 

Taeyong reached a trembling hand up and, very cautiously, holding his breath, he picked up the drops that had stained his face in two fingers, proving that they painted the pads in red. 

He was about to hyperventilate, but he didn't have time before the screaming began and the world went back to move at double speed to regain the minutes, exploding into a race of people running in every possible direction. 

It was _madness_. 

Behind him, Taeyong heard the plopping of yet another person falling, maybe even two. They fell like dominoes, and the dust on the street cobbles was rising up as the dull landing of bodies made it fly. 

The wall of people that previously had blocked his view was vanishing, either on the run or agonizing on the floor, but still, Taeyong wasn’t able to discern what was going on or what happened for all the people to be leaving this world.

He just knew it wasn’t good. 

He couldn’t barely turn around or lift his face higher than his own fingers, still crunching down, frozen like a misty flower during winter; but he forced himself to move, holding his breath to a point of almost choking without truly realising what he was doing, finally letting the air out in the form of a muffled moan. 

Taeyong suddenly understood Minhyun's daytime nightmare, lingering all over the streets where the blobby shapes of people polluted the ground as the carmine liquid slipped between the cobbles and down the walls. 

Those who were still conscious had begun to run or try to hide. 

There was screeching and searching for companions, mothers dragging children behind them, and maidens hugging each other as they rushed for cover; but Taeyong was alone and on his knees, forgetting about his fan to scoot closer to one young girl with cute couple hairpins in her hair buns that was laying on her side, back facing Taeyong and turquoise dress getting muddy and dusty.

With a touch that only a doctor could use, he moved her very carefully to lay her face up. 

She was no longer breathing. Her mouth was shut, almost as if he had clenched her jaw, her eyes open with an empty, veiled stare, and her extremely pale face had started being crossed by black markings like branches. 

Taeyong let her go immediately, a hand rising to cover his mouth immediately. 

He had to get out of there. 

With every move he made, he felt a puncture of dizziness attacking him, so hyper aware of his surroundings and the thick smell of iron that he knew well how to recognize.

He stood up. 

There was a distant, agonizing sound coming from one of the countless, fallen people, but he couldn’t stop to check who was pleading for help. Either way, Taeyong knew for a fact that he couldn’t save him. 

The palanquin was nowhere to be seen, and there was not a prefect on sight. Better say, none of them remain one piece, probably only those who faithfully followed Taemin and took care hiding him away from that moment of gruesome views.

Kai must be desperate and infuriated. 

Out of a sudden, everything was so silent that it was unhealthy, and Taeyong, with his hands clutched at his front, eyes stuck somewhere far, trying not to look at the ground, skipped over empty shells of past humans. 

"Don't forget your fan"

He stopped on his tracks, nails digging in the fabric of his crossed shirt as the voice that resounded behind him froze his every drop of blood in his veins. But not in the cold sense, it merely came to a _halt_.

The silky voice danced behind his ear like the only blow of wind left, feeling unlike the medic had ever felt before. 

"It's too pretty and sophisticated to forget it in the middle of this devastation" 

He let a long, quiet breath go, almost wondering if the odd calm was the thing that he shall feel before his soul let him. Nonetheless, it was his reason that left, the conclusion of his previous days' theories floating above his head, not yet being processed. 

He urged his body to move, or at least react to do any movement, finally succeeding at turning around. 

_Ten_. 

"Ten"

His wine red -no, blood red- lips tugged up in a smile. A tantalizing, soft smile that was no longer blocked by the shade of his umbrella. His hands were free, only balancing Taeyong’s pink fan gently, as if he held a piece of porcelain between his limb hands, garnished with rings and the pointy metal decorations of his nails. 

"What's- What’s all of this?" he managed to murmur with a low sound. Taeyong’s mouth was dry, and he shuffled his weight on his feet. “Everything is… everything is…”

“Broken?”

“Yeah” he breathed out. 

Ten hummed as a positive answer, but the medic couldn’t find the strength to make his brain keep working to interpret that. He only felt the trail of a wet tear rolling down his cheek. 

Was he crying? Was he crying for Ten?

“What… What happened? What happened here?”

Ten tilted his head to the side, the wisps of his bangs flowing over his face like the dripping ink of a brush caressing his embellishing countenance. He appeared pensive, as if he was evaluating the question and the possible answers there to give while Taeyong just burned down with curiosity, his eyes stinging from the dust, a faint smoke coming from somewhere -most likely a building on fire, judging by the tepid smell of ashes- and the held up tears. 

“You really don’t know?” 

The medic stared at him in silence, mouth parted with the heavy breathing. Not because he didn’t want to reply, but because he _couldn’t_. 

Ten sighed, with an amused, humoured breath that verged in incredulousness. 

“You really don’t know?” he asked again, that time sounding less teasing and more concerned about the answer. “Well, I happened here. I caused all of this”

Taeyong looked around. He dared to look around and witness the extension of desolation crowding at their feet. It was so quiet, calm, still and confusing. He felt kind of nauseous with the pump of adrenaline that insisted in traveling his body, and the fact that Ten was looking at him in _that_ way didn’t help. As if he was waiting for something, anything; to come out of Taeyong.

As if his opinion _mattered_. 

“And me?” murmured the medic, trying to hold back his tears. “I’m alive”

Reached that point, he was positive that he was one of the people on the floor and he was just having a fever dream. 

Ten had managed to slip into his fever dream, that was all. 

“That’s what you are concerned about?” inquired Ten, almost lighthearted. His silky voice caressed Taeyong in all the right places, which made the whole ordeal even more unbelievable for the medic, diagnosing himself with a comatose fantasy state. “How selfish, Taeyong, I didn’t expect that”

“You… didn’t answer” he replied, holding onto something, being stubborn and refusing to act like a sweet nothing despite his soft stammers. “It amuses you that I’m scared? Are you toying with me before you kill me? ”

His gaze hardened at the time the medic released his words. 

“No, I’m not intending to do that with you”

“Why?”

The aristocrat -if the senses of calling Ten so remained valid- walked towards Taeyong, but he was paralized once more, and only a barely noticeable jolt of his body shook him when the other man's hand, the one that wasn't holding his fan, grabbed his waist.

His black eyes met Taeyong’s, wide and blown out as if the medic was onto something from the backshop of the pharmacy. He could even feel his head getting lighter, as if the touch was the trigger for his body to get intoxicated with something unknown. It felt like the symptoms of climbing way too high for human resistance, like no blood cells to give him oxygen as his conscience slipped away from him.

He lifted his hand and watched it through lidded eyes, but there was not a trace of black lines on his skin so far. 

It trembled and almost dropped, but Ten’s hand- still holding his fan- held it up with just a delicate movement. 

Taeyong’s faded inner self was too close to smile and give up to the imagination of dancing with him to ignore it.

“Because you scare me” murmured Ten, and Taeyong was positive about him being already gone because he could not comprehend what he was hearing. His eyes were closed, anyways, he could be tripping. “And for a fact, that doesn’t happen often, so I hope I arrive late to your death. Perhaps the correct way to say it is that I just hope I never have to witness such tragedy” 

“You are letting me go?” he asked, faintly. He was melting against the hold of Ten’s hand digging on his flesh.

“Yes”

“What kind of…” he paused and played with the word that started with G in his tongue, but he didn’t like it enough to spit it yet. “... evil type creature are you to decide you want to let me go?”

“Let’s say I’m not the worst type”

“How can that even be?” he asked, but he honestly felt so drowsy. Maybe he was breathing too much smoke, or perhaps the smell of blood all around him, staining the edges of his robe, was taking a toll on him -absurd thought for an experienced doctor, whatsoever- but he felt like his eyes were heavy as he tried to open them again and found himself unable. He was crumbling and starting to understand the tightening hold of Ten on his hip. “It makes… no sense…”

“I’m not obligated to make sense to you”

“True. But you could be gentle with me” cooed Taeyong, blurring his words together. 

“I could” he accepted, his tone too soft to be real. “I guess I could”

“If you weren’t the bad one… that would make… the other people… the bad ones. That’s… that would…”

_Change a lot of things._

“Your city is in ruins, I reckon you shouldn’t be thinking about…”

The ground wobbled dangerously under Taeyong’s feet, Ten’s words swirled around in his brain, mixing up with his thoughts, too thick to discern anything in the opaque blend of thighs that finally giving in to whatever the closeness between them had brought to the table when he reached out and grabbed Ten’s arm as he stumbled back, his mind spinning and paling down with a shallow breath. 

He had no idea of what the speech was supposed to be or if Ten continued it. 

Maybe he was dying after all, like everyone else. His fair skin would start tinting with black branches like an infection and the cultivators would find him under the stand of wind chimes without a soul to get his deserved rest in the afterlife. 

The only thing that prevented him from falling and breaking his body in two parts was Ten’s grip, as the medic was held like he had never been held before; with a delicacy, a tenderness that was out of the worldly things Taeyong had known until that moment and made him paint a silly, zoned out smile in his face. 

How ironic. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ Twitter](https://twitter.com/leechailatten)


	3. Chapter 3

Against every pronostic he had within the last moments of his conscious state, Taeyong woke up. 

He was laying on a bed, and for the aching whine that his joints and back emitted, he should have been sleeping on it for long enough to engage in a profound slumber for his body to go absolutely tousled without him noticing it. 

He had fainted, which was worrisome. 

Maybe the stress, the fear or the intoxication with smoke had taken him down. He even played with the idea of a more unexplainable explanation that was not in his medicine books, but in the cultivator's scrolls. 

Not wanting to risk it, he pressed his pointer and middle fingers on the side of his windpipe and counted the pulses of his heartbeat with his eyes closed. He waited fifteen seconds and then breathed out, more relaxed. 

He didn't have trouble with air intakes either, there was not excruciating body pain anywhere, nor did he struggle with blurry vision. 

In fact, he could perceive a flowery scent around him. 

He frowned and looked to the side. 

There was an intricate sword in its sheath resting near a pillar, and a lit brazier where coals were burning, a faint smell of incense floating around as if Taeyong was opening his eyes in the middle of a temple. 

But as he looked around himself with more attention, he noticed it was an actual temple that surrounded him, the paint at the pillars chipping off the wood and a thousand wind chimes hanging from the ceiling, swinging faintly from the wind that slipped inside through a whole on the roof. 

He smiled for himself, still half gone and with his thoughts and memories momentarily paused to comprehend how he was nestled in a deep blue velvet mattress framed with carved wood railings while being in a temple. 

He could tell it was night outside, since there was no sunlight sipping through the crumbling ceiling and walls of the building, only lit candles scattered across the floor, hanging from rusty chandeliers and laying on the furniture.

His mind was dull, and his head felt heavy with slumber as he sat up, rubbing his hand on his temple to find himself. Yet he abruptly stopped when his face lifted up and he saw the figure sitting near the brazier, fanning the flames with the red glow of flames caressing his features and his pink fan that suited his hands as he waved it to cheer up the fire.

Seeing him in that light, unaware of his awakening, truly made the little sprout on Taeyong’s bosom want to burst and become a red rose. 

The rare crackling from the wood catching fire inside the brazier made Taeyong’s skin tremble, but it was not due to the cold, but because of the unraveling thought that occupied his mind with the orange glow falling on the man's dewy skin.

Taeyong stared at him in silence, barely believing his eyes as the flashback came to him. 

He had spared his life, but was that enough? 

Before the medic had a lot more time to ponder over that, Ten had lifted his eyes and found his. 

They -two strangers, practically- stared at one another for a suspended second that lasted eons in his mind.

"You meant it" was the only thing that the blonde managed to whisper, because that was one of the only things he could make sense of in his mind. 

"You are awake" he said coldly and interrupted whatever Taeyong was planning to say next, biting his flesh with a changed tone that wasn’t what his heart remembered. "Are you hurt?"

"N-no"

"Then get out of here as soon as possible"

The older was shocked by those words, sudden and absolutely incoherent. He stared at Ten for a moment with his lips parted, but not talking. 

"You… first you bring me all the way here but now you are telling me to go? Can you make sense out of your actions, please?" 

"Do you want me to elaborate on my point just after I told you to bail quickly?" 

"Yes?" Answered Taeyong with bitterness, because of course that he needed an explanation even if it was a tiny one.

And besides, if he was still in one piece, a few minutes more wouldn't make Ten take over him just in a click. 

"Do you really depreciate your life that much?" Inquired the other man. 

Until that moment, Taeyong had thought that he was unable to show any emotion that wasn't indifference or smugness but, out of a sudden, he sounded… grey, as if he really expected Taeyong to say no very vehemently. It was just a hint of it, a dissonance of his voice, but it didn't fall into the void of oblivion for the medic. 

"I do not, I just…" his throat clogged, while his mind realised the level of secrecy in the words he was about to pronounce in front of his new discovery of a _person_. For the other hand, the edges of his beautiful robe were stained with dust and red, so he chuckled in a cough, understanding that it wasn't the moment to be so unsteady. "I have a blue mind, it gets cold easily in this world. The only way I have to keep it off the floor is trying to find the gash of hope that I'm sure that remains in this world, so allow me to be selfish and ask you why on earth did you choose to spare me of all people and then ask me to flee" 

"Because my lucid moments have caducity" whispered Ten, eyes diverting from the man at the bed to stare at the faintly swinging bells. "And I don't know when _it_ comes and goes or how deep _it_ reaches. So get up and go in this instant" 

"I'm... not scared" he claimed, but the unapologetic chuckle from Ten elicited goosebumps on his skin that wanted to prove him wrong. 

Ten stood up from his place in front of the brazier and gave a dancing step towards the bed, waltzing with the shadows and shades of candles across the open space of the half-destroyed temple.

"Are you sure?"

He lifted up his hand and Taeyong’s eyes widened, blood freezing in his veins as he stared at the paper talisman he was carrying under his shirt. 

He crossed his arms tight over his chest, cheeks flushing with the color of bashfulness as he traveled the obvious thought of Ten’s fingers slipping under the fabric. 

There was just _something_ in him that the medic found hard to tune out of his attention. And he shouldn't feel like that counting with the knowledge he had and the information -because, _shit_ , that was something he shared with him from the top of his head without thinking twice- Ten possessed about his name. 

What could he even do with that? Curse him? Kill him? Cast a spell? 

"That… was a present from someone else" he said, limiting to say the truth he could make an use from to not make a bigger fool of himself with stupid tales. 

"Very rudimentary, if you ask me" 

"He at least tried" pouted Taeyong, clinging onto the bits of affection he was given. "But tell me already, why me?"

Ten sighed _hard_.

"To be just a dumb, insipid pedestrian of this city, you managge to annoy me a lot"

"Why do you do this?" He asked, either ignoring the pricking words of the other man or just putting an unusual effort giving him an unbothered look. "What did all that people do to you? Why would you commit to something so vile?"

"What makes you believe I'm interested in opening up for you?" 

"You owe it to me"

"Pardon? What do I owe you now?"

"You ravaged an entire city and I'm still willing to listen to your explanation, you _owe it to me_ " 

"Or what?"

Ten scoffed, solidly confirming that, yes, he had grown up to be a quite desperating man. That was proof of what happened when a person allowed rancour to take over him. 

What a pity. 

He was turning on his heels to abandon the conversation with a signal that he was sort of fed up, but Taeyong squinted his eyes as he stared at his back. 

" _Li Yongqin_ " 

At the sole name, he turned around again, and the self-sufficient smile tugged from Taeyong's lips, but it lasted just an instant before he realised how the other man was piercing him with his eyes from the front to the back like skewers sold at the market during weekends. 

Maybe names did have an importance in this world after all. Taeyong felt the taste on his tongue and the sweat run down the dip of his spine under the grave gaze of the other. 

Ten then sighed and closed the gap between him and the bed, sitting on the blue mattress at the furthest edge opposite to Taeyong.

The tilt of Ten’s head towards the pale moonlight that sipped through the ceiling's whole, entering the ray of luminosity, lighted up his face. 

He looked so familiar and so not even human at the same time that Taeyong needed to stare for a solid couple of seconds in the most pure silence, eyes traveling a black crack of lines over his temple, barely visible under the curtain of black hair that concealed the unusual scarring. 

"It has been long since the last time I heard my name"

"I said it the other day"

"Not with knowledge" he sighed. "Not like now" 

"So?"

"I'm listening” he announced carefully, with a soft, relaxed voice. “But it's under your risk to not be running out of this forest right now"

"Forest? Which forest are we in?" Asked Taeyong first, suddenly remembering he had no idea of where he was. Just as if it was about a diagnostic, his mind worked with the information he had and tried to piece everything together. "Is this the abandoned temple that got lost between the vegetation after people stopped paying respects here?" 

Ten nodded once. 

The doctor knew the story. When a temple loses their priests and the fame, the building becomes just four walls with no meaning and people start going somewhere more useful to pay their respects and, more than anything, ask for blessings like fortune, wealth and sometimes even health. 

It had been long, a thousand years, since Li Yongqin had temporarily abandoned his temple to find a solution about the Elderberries Forest issue. 

As he never came back, the building perished gradually until it became nothing. Or that's what everyone talked about, for Taeyong had a certain opinion about its actual state.

It wasn’t so bad for creating a living, the space was charming enough to result comfortably with a bit of effort. 

"It’s… your temple?"

"It _was_ "

“So you lied to me then”

“When did I lie to you?”

“You told me that your name is Ten even though I told you mine first” clarified Taeyong, putting all this right to do the accusation into the game.

“First off, you can’t deal more damage to me with my name that the other way around, since I don’t need to know your name to blow things up and you don’t have the cultivation knowledge to use a True Name for evil purposes that, by the other hand, I don’t see possible from your pure heart. But to relieve your preoccupation about my supposed lies, I didn’t really lie. Ten is the name I chose for myself to go by in the human world”

“So I can call you Ten too?”

“If it pleases you…”

Taeyong nodded slowly, and sat cross legged as he thought. 

After a while, he looked at Ten again, expression clearly hesitant under the scrutiny of the man in front of him. 

"You are… dead?" He inquired, making the other man chuckle, perhaps amused by Taeyong’s sudden and concerned devices as he stared at him with his big, prying eyes. 

It was an understatement that the medic was certainly sharp, or at least that he was showing some wit -no very common from humans- in that exact moment. 

He giggled for dramatism. 

Everything Ten did and said seemed like a perfectly knitted veil of programed moves that translated into a living choreography. 

"No, I'm not dead, what type of question is that? Who goes around asking such things? Is it even possible for a corpse to be talking back?"

"I… nevermind"

"What? Don't tell me, you are suspicious of me being a _ghost_?"

Taeyong paled in his already fair complexion.

There was no way this man believed he was being subtle, therefore, Ten was just once again toying with him, and the lopsided smile showing his white teeth of mischief was even more clarifying. 

"I have my reason" retorted Taeyong, stubborn enough to not let the other man win. "After what I saw" 

"Then why are you asking if you know the answer?" 

"Because I want it to be you who tells me" he blurted out. Ten, looked at him between mad, cynical, surprised, unconvinced and… _affectionate_ , which was a concoction that the medic didn't expect and, to some extent, liked to see in the expressive eyes of the man. "And stop playing around with me, I'm not so simple minded and it offends me" 

"You are a doctor, I believe you can make your conclusion correctly all by yourself. Do you need reassurement?"

"Don't you see I clearly do?" 

Ten laughed as he leaned back against the frame of the bed to rest his back on it, bending his legs on a careless, open pose. 

The gesture made the medic recoil a bit over himself, hugging his legs against his chest and prompting his chin over his bent knees. 

He had no idea of where his shoes were. 

"Still not running?" 

"I don't intend to" 

"It sounds like a bad decision" 

"It doesn't" he said with his pressed up lips and a tone that indicated that he was about to use the debating skills Baekhyun teased him about once more. "If you spared my life in the middle of that sea of murder, why would I worry now?"

"Sir" said Ten with a reprobatory tone. 

"And besides, you told me you weren’t planning to kill me" he said, ignoring what Ten was saying and being convinced. He was aware of how not normal the situation was or the way he was acting during it, but he couldn’t help it. "Even took me here, why? Because you didn't want to leave me in the street like a stray dog running through destruction?"

He clinged more onto his legs and covered himself up for further protection even if Ten was just distracted with the observation of a candle next to him. 

It was as if Ten had two different people inside him fighting, but Taeyong guessed that's what he exactly was. 

The light of the flame didn’t make Ten throw any shade over the mattress. 

“As I said, I don’t know why I can tolerate you this well or how long it’s going to last, but definitely there’s a part of me that wants you for questionable purposes. The not pretty ones, do you understand?”

Nothing made sense for Taeyong. He was scared, unsettled, and yet not intimidated. At least not enough as to run just like Ten was advising him to do.

He didn’t understand his own reactions, he couldn't believe there were filaments of his being that felt… _attracted_ to _him_ but it was really tangible and it was there.

He let go of the breath he was holding.

"I'm just saying… You are not as scary as the stories say" muttered Taeyong, so low that even himself wondered if Ten had heard him. 

But he had. 

“You are right, I don’t plan to kill you,” he nodded. “But sometimes I have a small moment, brief, where I don’t plan to kill anyone and even though those exist, you have seen what happened out there. I change opinions fast, and once I’m settled on something, that something is probably going to die. Just so you consider all the possibilities. I don’t even regret what I did, I’m unable to do that since long ago”

“In the city… Are they all-”

“No, not everyone”

“Xuxi…?”

“Alive. Also that pretentious son of a bitch wiggled out of it with the precepts”

“Who?”

“The Prime Minister, of course”

“Taemin?”

“Is that his name?” questioned Ten with a spark of with glowing in his eye as his mouth twisted. 

Taeyong pressed his lips together, remembering the whole ordeal with names and whatever Ten seemed to be able to do with them. 

He didn’t know what he should answer. 

"I already said I can't do a lot with the name, less so without the family name, calm down"

Taeyong chewed on his bottom lip. 

So that meant that among the two of them, it was only Taeyong that was in possession of his actual, real, full name; while Ten had just gone through with the reveal of the medic’s given name.

He nodded, then asked “Why him? What has he done to be chased by a… _you know_ ”

“Are you trying to be polite with me?” asked Ten, seemingly amused. Because it made no sense to behave like that in his presence and yet Taeyong tried his hardest to not say words that may offend him. 

Alas, Taeyong was unaware of the glimmer of appreciation that was gaining access in Ten. 

He shrugged as a response. “And why not?”

“And why not?” he muttered, repeating Taeyong’s words. 

Then he chuckled and kept staring at the flame with which he had been playing so far. 

The long, rounded tip of his fingernails were tracing drawings in the air, and a tail of glow followed him up painting ancient symbols at his will. 

“You know the story, don’t you? I was someone that…” he gestured with his other hand as if making himself interesting, theatrical and almost careless. Way too much for someone whose soul is _completely_ corrupted. “...had a never-ending curiosity. So much so that instead of pursuing the heritage of my father's very famous company when I came of age, because the world of cultivation was a thrill for me. The problem with him presented itself later, and it was worse than just a rare arrangement of paperwork.”

“You really headed out to the Elderberries Forest then?”

“Me? Well, a part of me did” he said, humoured as if he was sharing some inside joke with himself. “How stupid can a young, idealistic aristocrat be?”

“I wouldn’t say that was stupid"

"I was the son of a famous clan, which is probably the less approximate a man can be to humbleness or consciousness without stopping being irkingly pretentious"

Taeyong cocked up his eyebrows. 

"Irkingly pretentious? That's what you think?"

"What?" Asked Ten, turning the ruby of his appearance into a smug smirk "Are you offended? Because I guess you took it personally, then" 

"I'm not offended at all, I just think that you wanted to fix something and I appreciate the will”

“And did it work?”

Taeyong paused with silence. He felt very embarrassed, since it felt like Ten’s tone when he asked was very much reprimanding him or something similar. 

Ten had stopped playing with the candle for a moment to stare at him, compelling the man to answer his question and, incidentally, admit that he was wrong. His eyes were sharp, or at least sharper than Taeyong had recalled, but they were as fascinating as a pot of liquid ebony.

“N-no?”

“No, it didn’t. I didn’t solve anything and now I’m a bigger problem” he said with a cynic smile that, for Taeyong’s eyes, did a poor job to conceal the gloom behind his words. “Good intentions are nothing when you don’t measure your capacity with sense. I destroyed everything, even my family went down south with sorrow when they found out. There’s nothing left, not even myself”

There was a flicker of sadness in the ghost’s eyes, Taeyong was convinced of that and he didn’t like it. 

It was stupid, utterly absurd, but fate had sent him towards this path, made him cross ways with the one ghost that had been possessed by a reckless beast, agent of chaos, and he reckoned that he had started to _care_ about him. 

He wished that he was making it up, but the tears gathering at the edges of his eyes were hot and betrayed him. 

Cursing the facility of his heart to feel sensitive, he swallowed his own saliva to try to ease up the need of tearing up, hoping that Ten hadn’t noticed his stupidity.

“So you have… two souls?”

“One and half, I would say,” he said quietly. “It was never meant to be like that, most human souls die under the Hundun’s own, you have seen it. It tries to conquer bodies like a parasite and live in them for a while before consuming everything and jumping somewhere else. But since I was a cultivator and my spirit was slightly trained, I had the disgrace of bearing with it, so it lives down there. That’s why...”

“You are not the worst kind” completed Taeyong. "You are just the right vessel" 

Ten paused, his chest raising and falling, like in a slow-paced sigh. 

He looked human, just as real and flawed. He breathed, and probably, if Taeyong were as insane as to dare to try, he could have felt his blood running on his vein, under his skin, if he put the pressure of his fingers on his neck. 

“Exactly. Sometimes now, half of my human conscience is back, but it makes this godforsaken curse worse”

“Why?”

It was not the moment to discern a tiny piece of a long gone tenderness behind the layer of iniquity pooling on Ten’s eyes when the ghost stared back at him.

“It’s worse to have a gap of sense to recognize the sheer chaos and death that lays in your path, burning behind your back as you pass. And all you constantly hear is everyone’s souls screaming around you, unable to feel guilt… just a tiny distant voice sometimes that reminds you you have broken everything and feels regrets of not being able to break free to stop it, or at least go to die in peace”

“That’s… fucked up” coughed Taeyong. But it was the doctor, after all, the one who always tried his best to hold onto sanity in this desolating world and would dig two meters into the sand to help one single bud of hope bloom. “But at the same time… if you… if your soul hadn’t been that strong, the Hundun beast would be fully unleashed on the forest still. Now people can transit across it. After all, don’t you keep it in a cage?” 

“This body is nothing near a cage for it” he responded, leaning back further on the frame of the bed -still all the far he could have gone from Taeyong without leaving that piece of furniture- his eyes closing and prey of a tired aura. 

It was then when Taeyong understood that he was invading Ten’s living space and occupating what was probably his bed.

It was a pretty bed, actually luxurious and with rich blue velvet covering the mattress, totally out of place considering they were under the half broken roof of an abandoned temple. A bunch of white cotton sheets were neatly folded and piled near the header too, so the place didn’t really look nor feel disagreeable. It just happened to be forgotten into the depth of the forest, away from people. 

“I wonder then...” the medic began breathing out, his finger tangling and untangling in the cord that held his tunic together. “What do you feel for me if I’m standing here? Compassion? Mercy?”

“Empathy” The drop of his voice fell on Taeyong with a warm feeling that should have been dangerous. "And... affection?"

“...Why?”

Ten shrugged with a short, low snicker. “You are too pretty to be bad"

"Uh-"

"And especially, nice. Maybe too much for your own good, if you ask me”

“Am I?” he said with an awkward titter, not really knowing what to reply. 

“Understand what I’m about to say… Beauty is just a state of the soul. There are very few things in this deranged world that can remain pretty despite the surroundings. Many years have passed for me between two realms and I had forgotten there were scraps of good in either of them. But then… _you_ ” 

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You, for some reason”

“A-and what’s the difference between me and someone else? For example, the Prime Minister?”

The air seemed to still and go stale just when he pronounced the question. 

Ten was absolutely silent, and he moved with a sluggish movement that made Taeyong feel a terrifying chill conquer his body. 

The ghost’s eyes opened to look at him with a severe glare, and his jaw grounded. 

“ _Please_ ” he spat with contempt. “Don’t compare yourself with a Prime Minister”

“But… How can you hate him that bad? You didn't even know his name… ”

“I don’t need to, when you know one, you know all of them, they are all the same shit in a different envelope. The ones that help people end up being forgotten, and meanwhile the cowards turn into politicians and live with honor and luxury playing a role" he said, making Taeyong tie all the pieces in his mind. 

That was what accumulated rancour felt like. 

Thousands of years of hatred exploding into murderous rage. 

It probably didn’t even start like that, and Ten’s sould would have been dragged by the strong stream of his curse, but with time, the resentment slipped through the walls of his being and stained his original soul as well. 

"I bet you know what I’m talking about," continued Ten. "You who are a doctor with not enough coins to get yourself a jade hairpin without making counts”

Taeyong drew his lower lip between his teeth, chewing Ten’s word with the knowledge that they were true. And not only that, they were short. Some people even looked bad at him, scrunched their noses when they passed by and talked with sharp tongues about him. 

His reputation had started going up, but it wasn’t because he had helped people heal, it only had to do with the coins he had gained and the new robes he bought. 

Maybe, just maybe, Ten really wasn’t the worst type if Taeyong was understanding his point. 

Or maybe he was descending towards insanity with him. 

Either way, Taeyong felt the tie tighten.

“So… so…” he stammered after the minutes he needed to let the thoughts calm down inside his brain and allow him to order the ideas at least a bit. “What do we do now?” 

“We? I’m going to tell you what _you_ should do? You should go. Home. As I said when you woke up”

“What if I don’t want to go?”

“Don’t be ridiculous” said the ghost, clicking his tongue. “It’s night time, but the most dangerous thing that could happen to you is right besides you, so you could dismiss the fear and walk to your house”

“Is not fear what makes me reluctant to leave. What if I don’t want to go?”

Ten looked at him, a bewildered look starting to distort the mask of coldness and indifference the man had upon him for what seemed to be all the time. 

“Listen up, little medic” he said, a graceful hand raising to point at him defyingly. “Be smart before I turn not as comprehensive”

“That wouldn’t be _you_ , exactly”

“It would feel like me. I would feel like it’s me. And it wouldn’t be an excuse”

“But-”

“And besides, your friends are prefects, so you should know they are going to haunt me for what I did in the city. Restlessly. I’m telling you they have the losing side, so it’s not going to be pleasurable for you to witness the battle, by far. Go to them now, maybe you convince them of investing into more common sense charged activities than try to fight a ghost single handedly”

“But-”

“Taeyong” he interrupted again, sternly. His smoky voice then pronounced unique words. “You are a wonder, so stop wanting to die so much, you pain me with it” 

“I don’t want to die, but what if I agree with you?”

“I beg your _pardon_?”

“I agree with you. In the city people can be terrible, and they will be at the first turn of the wheel. You are not even the worst type I have ever met, so why should I go to the damned side if I can stay here?”

“You are not choosing me before humans right now”

“I am, though”

“That’s not how you are _supposed_ to react”

“And how am I supposed to do it? You were supposed to end me too, and you didn’t. You chose me, so what can't I choose you back?”

“Not killing you is enough for you to decide you want to stay?” asked the black haired man. 

He looked solemn about the things he was asking Taeyong, not helping himself proving the point he was trying to defend about the medic being better off without him. 

Because he dropped more sensitivity than the humans Taeyong had known. 

“I’m pretty certain that it’s not what it should be”.

“Not only that” explained Taeyong. “It’s sickening how people behave, it’s absurd and cold how they do things like adulating the Prime Minister without even knowing how he was like. And it has been like that all my life. They were pushing and pulling without minding their own kin, they never looked at me without the disgusted nounce, they didn't even try to pretend in order to not hurt me. When you arrived to end it, I was on the ground and no one even cared about it. At least I know _you_ and I know you wouldn’t let me sprawled on the mud”

“You know me? Our time together has been short”

“And even in that short length of time I learned that you won’t hurt me. Do I know that from people in the city?” he asked, and Ten seemed to pause for real this time. The candle flames gave the impression that they were trembling with a quake of sentiments. “They don’t like me much, either; they are disrespectful and ill-mannered. When you arrived this morning, it felt at peace for a moment that everyone had stopped”

“That’s not how it should be…”

“But it is, because life is _unfair_ ” sentenced the blonde. Ten knew that was true, life had never been fair, not to any of them. “And no, I don’t want to walk for miles in the night, by myself to go to my empty house in the middle of an agonizing city. You can't send me back like this”

“And what do you want me to do?”

“If you have the slightless sympathy for me, as you claim, let me stay” 

Ten let out a breathy jitter, and Taeyong knew for one reason or another that the motive behind such a sound was that Ten couldn’t believe how stubborn he was being. 

The doctor couldn’t believe it either. If someone had told him that he would be refusing to run away from a wrathful ghost a month ago, or even some days ago, he would have frowned deeply and tried to never hang out with the person in question. 

He couldn’t pinpoint what was the trigger of a change of mind like his, but Ten’s word had, at the very least, struck a chord. 

"I would do anything for you to shut up right now" he said plainly, in part to end the conversation already and not be obliged to keep thinking about the air’s tension. "And you look like you would cry and bang my door for hours if I drag you outside, so I guess you can stay the night. But listen to me, you are going back to your house when the sun goes up, alright?" 

"Thank you"

" _Thank you_ " repeated Ten under breath as a clearly mocking soliloquy, with a curve of his lips as he stole a pillow from the stuck of them behind Taeyong and placed it at his side. "What the _fuck_?" 

Before fully laying back, there was a quick move from the ghost that surprised Taeyong.

Ten handed him the paper talisman that he had been keeping in his robe with a trickish curve of his mouth. 

“If you want to feel safer…” Taeyong let go of his legs, his legs spilling onto the mattress as he leaned in to catch the paper, but before he could grip it, Ten yanked it back amused with the frown that appeared on Taeyong’s face. “But the arrangement is wrong” 

Taeyong opened his mouth to complain, but it didn’t go out, shocked by Ten’s audacity.

Nonetheless, just like he had done before with the candles, he lifted his index and heart finger together and drew a symbol that Taeyong would have never understood, pushing the luminous drawing that floated in the air towards the paper and causing a small flash of warm light that imprinted the mark where the other one used to be. 

It caught fire for a moment, and Ten shook it fast to get rid of the flame before letting the talisman fall on the gap of mattress that separated them. 

"My skills are rusty but it will do. A ghost repellent. It protects you from black magic. To some extent."

“You still can use your cultivator's arts?”

“I poorly could back then, when I went to the forest. I was delusional. But the Hundun helped a lot in improving the energy channel. A fucking bitch, but one that made a mediocre student of cultivation turn into something powerful”

The doctor pouted, not content with the way the man had expressed that, and picked up his talisman, returning it to where it had been stored before and crunched himself into a fetus position to sleep without invading the whole bed. 

However, the hovering of the other man at his feet, light as a feather, unsettled him. 

It felt different to share a bed, let's not say with a stranger. 

Or was Ten still a stranger? 

A stranger must be someone that you don't know, but Taeyong had made himself familiar with his quirks and his manners over the days, and especially during the last hours as they talked. 

So that turned them into what? Friends? In which case he would be sharing a bed with a friend. 

That also felt… strange.

Taeyong sat up again, and tried to find Ten with his eyes. 

He was sitting right where he left him, an elbow prompted on the wooden frame and his chin tucked on his palm. Half of his face was being shaded by the flowy threads of his black hair, but the doctor could discern his grin of self-sufficiency and his eyes stuck on him.

His body slightly jumped with surprise, but Ten didn’t even try to conceal that he was indeed checking Taeyong out, nor his amusement with the medic’s reaction.

He felt so flustered that it was hard to explain, cheeks heating up with shame and embarrassment. 

"What now?" 

"Nothing!" He sulked, going back to the pillow. Yet, it was only a clock minute before he jumped up again like a spring and looked at Ten with furrowed eyebrows. "I- Would you-"

"Spit it out"

"Would you have a cup of water for me? I didn’t… drink in a while" he muttered, growing even more embarrassed than he was in the first place. “Human necessities” 

Ten laughed, with his whole voice and body, emitting a sound that resembled a clear stream of water. It was high-pitched even, and it was paired with a blinding smile that disconcerted Taeyong further. 

He stood up from the bed, and went away without a word. 

Taeyong was puzzled, living with sheer bafflement as he observed the ghost’s shadowless body travel across the temple towards a pile of objects and trinkets from which he grabbed a jar and a cup and filled it with water. 

His fingers shook when he received the fine cup of white and red porcelain with painted flowers and butterflies, barely cracked considering the status of the building. 

He binge drank all the content eagerly because yes, he was truly thirsty, so much that Ten recurred to give him the entire jar and let the medic drink down until he was satisfied. 

The ghost watched his lips get wet with the haste, and a naughty drop scape to roll down on Taeyong's neck, with his Adam's apple bobbing, until it got absorbed by the fabric of his shirt's collar. 

"Don't choke" he murmured, with his dark eyes studying the particular view given by the medic. 

Taeyong’s jawline was sharp like a blade, and his lips, attached to the jar now, were fleshy like a wild berry. 

It was the gaze that almost made Taeyong drown on a simple jar of water. 

When he returned it to its owner, it weighed less than half of it, mostly counting with the ceramic only. 

"Does the spoiled prince want anything else?" Asked Ten, making fun of him. "Directly from the Ghost Realm to your hands" 

“Is this water magic? Comes from another plane?”

“Oh, of course” said the black haired man, strolling around and smiling with the sparkles Taeyong’s eyes showed. He could fit entire constellations of stars inside those orbs. “My magic comes so very handy to summon waterfalls and create rains of moon cakes” 

Taeyong frowned, annoyed, wondering if the shit-eating attitude was a trait caused by the ghost nature, or if Ten's original soul was already that much to handle.

Nonetheless, and even if he may have hated to admit it, Taeyong was enjoying all of it with the music of Ten’s laugh once he found the pleasure in tricking the blonde. It made him feel playful like a young kid, more cheerful and light.

It had been a while since he didn't get to spend the night with someone that wasn’t himself. Perhaps that was what impeded him to leave, because having company was a good change of his routine. 

He was shy at first encounters, and the disregard of half of the population of Ru’nan, a city of noblemen and rich merchant- towards his person wasn’t the best factor to help Taeyong make friends. 

Let's not mention… something deeper. 

The last thing he would have needed to make his reputation sink forevermore would have been confirming the already extended rumor of him being not very much interested in the female gender. 

At least Ten gave him some laughs and something to think of. 

"Don't be infantile" he grunted. "You are old enough already"

The aforementioned man pretended to gasp offended, but it was only part of his act as he went back to sit at his side of the bed, although he didn’t push himself that far onto the railing that time. 

He too must have been lonely for a long time. 

Taeyong could only begin imagining how much a thousand years worth slot of solitude should suck, probably with no one to listen to his troubles that would be too many as a ghost. 

He spaced out brooding over that idea, and it was several minutes later that he noticed Ten’s interested look on him. 

"What are you looking at?" asked the ghost. 

The cautious fragment of Taeyong made him chew his lip with the words waiting to go out and link the frustrations they have in common. 

Additionally, Ten was _gorgeous_. 

Taeyong was slipping into a black hole.

"You… you are beautiful"

"… Okay"

"Okay?" He repeated, incredulous and obviously coming out from the layer of reality where he was living. "That's it?"

"Oh, you wanted me to pretend I'm flattered, my bad" said the other sarcastically, guiding a hand to his chest with faked and yet perfect grace. He even got a hold of Taeyong’s pink fan pulled aside and hid behind it with the gracious move required by high-classes. "Stop it, you seducer, I'm going to blush"

Beyond all prospects, Taeyong’s lips curled up in a smile and he chuckled, shaking his head, still low. 

The flames were now making the candles burn brighter, and the red hues curled on Ten’s eyes like demonic fireflies. 

"Is that what you wanted to hear?" Kept joking the youngest of the pair. "You think I'm a young maiden in distress? Come on, I know you know better than that" He sang, leaning on the bed sideways, his elbow sinking on the mattress and his chin prompted on his palm while he, idly and almost looking accidentally tittilant, extracted the long needle off his bun and his hair crashed like a wave with the muffled sound of the silver ring falling on the sheets. 

Taeyong didn’t take his eyes off him. 

The silver of Ten’s hairpin trickleted, as he fidgeted with it and made it spin over his fingers like a bored bachelor student with his nib pen or the guests from Dejun's tea house with the pipes when they were too gone on opium to remember those were one of the most expensive items in their rooms at that point. 

Ten’s eyes were on the blue velvet when he spoke. "You are beautiful too, I think you are just unaware of how much" 

During a dream, sometimes, events happen in a rush and jump all over the place without a lineal coherence. 

That was the kind of feeling that Taeyong’s heart held inside when he heard his particular demon speak, and the sudden, swift flash of warm candlelight over silver contributed to it, holding back the gasp once Ten made the hair needle spin on his palm and the medic could hear the sharp metal item sinking in the soft wooden floor like an arrow piercing the flesh of his heart.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone called him beautiful. 

From that angle, he could see the black lines on Ten's skin like branches of a three stretching out towards the sky, appearing from behind the fabric of his shirt and scrapping one side of his collar and neck.

He picked up one of the stray wafts of Ten’s hair that was tangling over his shoulder to push it back, but the ghost slapped his hand away with a lazy move. 

"You are unbelievable" he laughed, but he seemed actually concerned underneath. Or perhaps it was just the sweetening of the air that separated them. “Holding onto your talisman but hitting on a wrathful ghost two seconds after. You are like a living incoherence”

Taeyong shrugged, knowing he was right. 

His bluntness was growing inside of him as he stood up from the bed and walked towards the brazier, feeling the heat raising around it. 

He took the fixed talisman out and stared at it pausedly, his back facing Ten’s curious eyes as he examined the flowiness of the new symbol. 

He chuckled, and then let the paper fall on the fire pit making a blue-ish glow illuminate the room for a second before the magic died on the fire as the paper was erased from their realm. 

When he angled his face back to check on his unusual companion, there was understandment on his eyes, but also severity.

Taeyong returned to the spot he had been occupying on the chaise. He too, decided that sitting at the furthest end wasn't a need, and so Ten’s knees and his graced together as he crossed his legs over the mattress. 

Nothing made sense but he didn't care, eyes feeling attracted to the pooling red of Ten's lips like they had magnetic qualities. 

He was doomed to try that liquefied gloss of ruby, or at least to yearn for it. Everyone that had enough sympathy to give Ten a chance would have craved for it, and he was no different. 

But he didn't know how to approach that feeling of his. 

He didn't _have_ to, because in the next heartbeat it was Ten who scooted closer. 

He cocked up an eyebrow, almost as if he was planning to dare Taeyong to act up himself. 

His lip trembled, hands clenching on the mattress' velvet at either of his sides while his eyes lifted just a moment to stare at Ten's eyes. 

"Where have you been?" Breathed Taeyong out, his voice coming out fumbly without remedy. 

Ten shrugged. 

"Does that even matter?"

"Probably not but-" 

Without warning, Ten’s lips slotted against his, and it took only the flicker of a second to feel rough and spread the wave of heat across Taeyong, whose suspended body reacted all of a sudden to kiss him back. 

His quiet gasp of surprise turnturnt Ten’s attention deeper, teasing an unhurried, lingering tongue across Taeyong’s lips. 

The medic was beyond convinced of his need to feel that, to taste Ten on his tongue and play with the sharp edge of his affection, so he parted his mouth and waited for the ghost to take control over the situation. 

Yet he only got a breeze of tepid night air upon his heated up lips. It was annoying, and Taeyong followed his lips with a frown for a moment when Ten pulled back.

"Ten"

His hushed call got lost into the nothingness of the temple, at the part where the space wasn't heated up by the burning coals and their colliding lives fusing into indulgence; as Ten’s lips pressed on the corner of Taeyong’s mouth with a delicacy he wouldn't have believed from anyone in the city. 

But somehow, it just felt real from Ten, as if it couldn't be any other way. 

The medic's eyes fluttered closed when he was granted another butterfly kiss under the sharp line of his jaw. Just as brief and just as devastating to his heart being set target of arrows of sentiment. 

"You were not just going to wish we met earlier, were you?" 

Taeyong took the man's softly shaped face on his hand, lifting it up to crash his mouth on his again. 

Ten really wasn't like he would have imagined a wrathful ghost to be, smiling under Taeyong’s craving lips. He tasted sweet, like a sip of roses' water cooled down against ice hinted with cotton flowers. His hands felt gentle against his body when they traveled down to hold his hips, still with the careful mannerism of someone who once was used to spending time among teapots and nib pens. 

Taeyong didn’t even bother trying to recall when was the last time someone handled him like that, because there was none. 

He inhaled sharply when he had a gap for it, seeking for oxygen without wanting to travel far from Ten’s lips. 

"And why not? With the way you treat me... and the way you touch me... why not?"

“Because I want to tell you that I love you, but I wish your heart a better storm than this. It would be dumb to chose this chaos"

"Am I not allowed to be dumb?"

"I see you more like… you are more like… unique. There are not many men like you left in this world or the other" Answered the black haired man, a hand cupping Taeyong’s cheek and brushing his thumb over his wet lips. 

Taeyong leaned further onto the touch, almost like a greedy kitten on the street as he let Ten trace his temple, his jaw and then his neck with the tip of his nails. 

"So humble, good and fair…" he murmured, smoky words breaking against the medic’s throat before Ten’s lips claimed the bare skin for a rain of pecks. "And so _stunning_ "

Taeyong’s body tensed, but Ten had his hips held down and there was no way he could wiggle out of the embrace as the aforementioned man returned the attention to his lips. Yet he stopped just millimetres away and stared at Taeyong, looking back at him through a thick fan of curly, long lashes that framed the most exquisite pair of praline orbs Ten had ever seen in thousands of years alive.

Kind of alive.

"Oh? You like to be praised?" 

Taeyong didn’t want to answer, he craved the mouth that was lingering over his and confessing sweet things for him, so he went after it. Still, Ten could read him well and leaned back just as much, with an impish grin curling his lips. 

"You like to be told you are beautiful? Attractive?" He teased, finding pleasure on the small pout of Taeyong’s lips as he delayed the kiss, sensation paired with the tingle of the adjectives touching his blood. "What's the word that indulges you? Radiant? _Pretty_?"

The term and the tone ripped a quiet whimper from in between his pressed lips, and Ten’s expression shone with victory. 

"Kiss me again, _please_ " Taeyong cried, taking the loose collar of Ten’s garments to join their lips again.

And Ten obliged. 

He did it in a way that swept Taeyong off his feet, with their tongues lacing together and the wet click of their mouths gliding against each other with a passion key that elevated by the second. The blonde could feel Ten’s body leaning on him, their chests grazing against one another, drowning on the forgotten warmth of another person. 

He wanted more of it, _needed_ it, and his limbs reacted, wrapping around Ten’s neck to correspond his moves. 

His heart drummed with a sped up tempo, getting intoxicated with the love and affection he had lacked and craved for so long. 

His body jolted as if a spark had stricken him, air filling his lungs with a sharp gasp when Ten lowered himself without warning and his tongue trailed a lick on his neck that ended up with his lips attacking his sensitive skin and sucking lovingly at the side of his neck. He trembled, but the ghost had snaked his arms behind him, one around his hips and the other hand holding the back of his neck to keep him still. 

One lick, two, three and then another kiss; they kept coming one after the other, and the deprivation of touches that Taeyong was used to didn’t help him cope with them with stoicism, only with his hands balling around the fabric at the sides of Ten’s hips. 

“What were you in your previous life, Taeyong?” murmured Ten with his hands becoming a mere server of Taeyong’s body. “Were you a saint? A priest? Someone whose brilliant soul -your soul- really deserved to ascend in this one life and got away with the most brilliant and precious form too?”

With a mewl of delight, stoned by the infinite praises, Taeyong angled his head back, allowing space for the other man who, noticing the increased speed of Taeyong heartbeat under his lips, smirked knowingly and scrapped the pristine skin of the medic with his teeth. 

He whimpered with a bit more enthusiasm than normal, his hands soon pressing against his own lips to conceal it, but it was late.

Ten moved back to stare at him, his orbs casting shades of passion over the fondness. 

"Shy?"

Taeyong was absolutely flustered, but not intimidated. If anything, he had been growing into his area of acting, and he was no longer able to back up.

He shook his head.

"You don't want me to hear you? Why are you not talking?" asked Ten, repositioning himself on the bed, leaning back against the pillows and leaving Taeyong cold due to the robbery of his source of heat. "Depriving me of your heady voice? Please don't"

"You like my voice?" Murmured Taeyong breaking the aforesaid silence. 

"I have loved it ever since I first heard you say my name so nonchalantly at the back of that charriage. It's unusual for me to feel so thrilled after all this time… I couldn't kill my drug then, _that_ would have been _dumb_ "

Taeyong stared. All he could do was stare at Ten reclined figure all along the blue velvet bed. 

The ghost knew Taeyong’s trouble, and took matters into hand. He lifted one finger and gestured to Taeyong to get closer with him. 

Needless to say, the medic compelled and leaned on his side, next to Ten.

They were facing each other, squeezed on the bed. 

"Do you want me to-"

"Yes" 

"I didn’t finish the sentence" smiled the one with the black hair. "It could be literally anything, I could suggest anything right now" 

"Yes in any case" breathed out Taeyong. "I'll take anything from you"

The husky chuckle that went out of Ten’s throat made goosebumps appear all over his body. 

"Taeyong, dear, _love_ " he cooed while his hands took over the thin, delicate hips of the blonde to push him against his own chest. Taeyong melted into a puddle of everything he ever wanted. "Can I call you love?" The ghost continued, leaning closer to his ear and punctuating the question with a kiss on his lobe from where an earring of jade and metal hung. 

Taeyong nodded, but Ten was not satisfied with that, and his voice showed it when it twisted closer to a demanding note.

"I will ask again and you will answer with words, alright?" Taeyong gulped, unable to fully concentrate on what he was being told. "Can I call you love?"

"Yes. I _want_ you calling me love" 

"Alright, then, love…" he muttered with a tactile, tantalizing voice that accompanied the wave of his body crushing against Taeyong’s own with an impelling touch. "We are going to set a couple rules here, yes?"

"Which ones?" 

"First, let's trust each other"

"O-okay, I'm already doing that"

"I know, love” he assured, ending his sentence with a chaste peck. “Second, you should answer me properly when I talk to you" 

"I'm- sure, I will"

"Good" he smirked. His fingers were dancing on Taeyong’s skin and rolling down his collar, going as low as the cut of his clothes allowed and teasing the edges of their covering. "The third, last, and more important one. Not disregard life so much, like you have been doing. It makes my heart ache, you understand?" 

"Uh-hu" 

He nodded with his breath laboured and the sensation of bliss chasing after him when Ten’s lips came back to press on the soft spot that joined his jaw and his neck. 

"So hear the question before agreeing. Especially when it's me"

“I don’t fear you”

“But you should, so let’s do it like this… allow me to be tranquil”

"Alright"

Ten moved up and Taeyong caught his lips with his, eliciting a surprised but content exchange from the ghost.

It didn't last long before the one with black hair pushed Taeyong back from his shoulder and made his back lay flat on the mattress. 

"The question was: do you want me to take the reins? Stay loving you for the night and going that far?"

His entire face should have been just crimson red under the light of candle flames. 

The question felt good, _too good_ , and before he was done assimilating the question, his tongue had already spoken a faint "please".

Again, the curl of Ten’s lips pressed against Taeyong’s skin. 

"Please, touch me and love me and-" 

"I will" His words collapsed against smooth skin and silk from Taeyong’s robe as Ten was unable to detach himself from the wonderful sensation that his proximity gave him. "I will treasure you, love. Make you feel like you deserve, like the others can't admit you deserve" 

His kisses dotted the medic’s skin like a rainpour; on his lips, on his cheeks, on his neck and then his collar as the man's hands paired the ministrations going lower at his sides. He rested them on his hips for a few minutes and then, he started undoing the knot of his belt, pulling the robe apart. 

And then the shirt.

Taeyong was true beauty, from the pink of rosebuds blooming on his chest to the soft dip of his navel, and Ten soon gave him the attention he deserved. 

The medic's bony hands clinged onto Ten’s shoulders, holding back a gasp when his delicate lips kissed over the perked up nub of his chest. 

Taeyong knew his own body well, but Ten was supposed to be just discovering it. And yet, every touch had the feeling of a mastered art when Ten executed them, almost if it all was meant to be. He caressed him softly, making the blonde feel so _cherished_ and _loved_. 

He was whimpering quietly as the other stuck his tongue out to lick over the hardened nipple and then moved to lick the other while his fingers pressed the swollen nub so none of them would feel jealous of the attention the other waa getting. 

"You like it here?" 

Taeyong was falling onto a heady trance, but he nodded and tangled his fingers on his black glossy hair to keep him close.

"Yes, I- aah!" Ten's teeth pressed hard on the stiff nub, making his back arch. 

Ten chuckled delighted with the reactions that emanated from Taeyong. 

The blonde was mewling, rolling his hips up as a plea and gasping out with every swipe of Ten's tongue on the sensitive tip of his nipple. 

"I bet you could end it up just with this" he whispered, his hot breath lingering over the spit covered chest. He applied more pressure to it with his fingers, staring at the entranced expression on Taeyong's eyes. "So sure. With my tongue on your sensitive nipples" 

"It has been a while… since no one touches me like this" he muttered with his breath ragged as if trying to justify himself. 

Because Ten was right, only his tongue flicking over his nipples was about to set him off.

"That’s not right, love, not fair" crooned Ten, pausing to busy himself with the pale plane of skin below his nipples, sucking pretty blossoms and making Taeyong his garden, getting red and violet marks with a tune of sounds from the blonde. "You deserve the pleasure, and the attention… and this body is too pretty to let it untouched. It deserves all the pretty red and purple flowers to honor it, doesn’t it?" 

He hummed content, letting himself feel more free as he tugged from Ten's top eager to feel more. 

"I want to see…" mewled Taeyong in between the short gasps that Ten's hands rubbing patterns on his skin were eliciting. "And I want to touch. You must be feeling lonely too..." 

"Not anymore"

"But I want you" whined Taeyong. “I want to make you feel loved too”

"Touch me and have me, then, I'm here at your disposal" teased the younger, putting a peck on Taeyong’s pouty lips. "Or is it something else? Tell me what you want, love"

"Hmm, yes, it's something else"

"Tell me, as we agreed"

Taeyong's eyes fluttered as his sentiments laced with trust.

He made eye contact with Ten, melting on his beautiful eyes out of a dream. Not a nightmare, only a delicious, misunderstood dream. 

"Take off your clothes" he said, softly but unyielding. "I want your skin to touch mine"

Ten smirked and started undoing his clothes and Taeyong’s ones as well. The pieces of the medic's elegant and half ruined outfit were falling on the floor like petals with an accompaniment of Ten's funny breaths between kisses seeing Taeyong’s cheeks getting pink for the exposure of his own body.

And once there was nothing else to separate them, Taeyong's soft exhale floated on the temple's air whilst Ten took a pause to admire the rosy tip of his penis standing tall between his legs. 

All the small touches as they leaned over each other pleased Taeyong and made Ten’s eyes become deeper and fonder of the boy that had ended up beneath him, on his bed by an unexpected click of events. 

Ten didn’t expect to ever find anyone that could make his sympathy for humankind ressurge ever in the slightless, but there was Taeyong proving him wrong and making thousands of years tumble in the spawn of passing hours.

He wondered if the medic -now a mess of lust and flourishing love bites- knew what something like that meant coming from no less than a ghost. 

There was no mild sentiment that stopped rage on its tracks, only real cascades of emotions. 

Perhaps it was because Ten had been like Taeyong once, convinced of doing good things for others instead of wrecking havoc against every little thing. He almost missed it, but the Hundun was stronger than that. 

"So what shall we do with you?" Purred Ten with a smile, attaching his lips on Taeyong's shoulder while his hand played with feather touches on his inner thigh. Taeyong’s heartbeat rushed like a waterfall. "What makes you the most pleased, love?" 

Taeyong failed to answer, moaning when the ghost wrapped his hand around his shaft, carefully spreading the moist beaded on the slit. 

"Oh? You like that?" Crooned Ten with his lips grazing his ear while Taeyong arched his back, blind with pleasure after so much time even by just the small attention. "Shall I keep doing this?"

"Oh please, oh please," Taeyong muttered in silence, his hips rolling up sensually, feeling his body warm more and more the longer Ten kept stroking him, hoping he could rub against something more pleasurable for both.

He moaned long, his mouth agape and his mind hazy with lust, not really answering the question Ten had made.

He had no air to answer, just to gasp and moan as Ten didn't allow him to breath with the speed up of his hand. 

He knew that it was because Ten wasn’t letting him catch a moment to speak that he would tell Taeyong he was breaking their promise to harass him with more pleasure, but he loved that.

To only think about the type of things a ghost could come up with, he shuddered. 

It was absolutely erring to feel aroused by evil and chaos, but after staying around him with that level of tolerance after a mass murder, Taeyong could no longer claim a moral compass anyways. 

It made no sense to commit to virtue if only hypocrisy awaited for him at the city, Ten knew better. 

They could do much better like that.

He was naked and leaking, eyes fluttering, trying to focus on Ten’s wicked expression while he played with his greedy cock masterfully, making his stomach clench and his toes curl. 

"Please, _please_ …" he whimpered a little bit louder, already asking hard for his release with his nails digging on his shoulders. "Don't stop, please, I _need_ it..." 

"Oh, my love, you really are so responsive and unique… beautiful and begging to cum like this already" Taeyong gave him doe eyes he had never seen before. Not that he could remember, and if he didn’t remember, it meant they weren’t as potent as Taeyong’s own, for he knew that look would stick to him. "But it's too soon, right? I have only started" 

His moan was almost pitiful, but in an ellating way for both. "Can I have more?" 

"Of what?" Grinned Ten, with his fingers leaving his hardness.

Taeyong lowered his hand to grip Ten’s own, making it descend between his legs as their eyes were locked, until he finally pressed Ten's palm against his sleek shaft again. 

His breath hitched as a response. 

"Of what, my love?" He repeated, insisting with a steadier voice and whipping his hand off Taeyong’s hold with a smirk. "Didn't we agree to you giving me your voice?" 

"But-" 

"Well, of course you are not meant to be all the obedient or behaved a man is supposed to be in the city" he continued, cutting Taeyong up in a way that made the medic’s whole body jolt with anticipation. "If you were, we wouldn’t be piecing together this good, I wouldn’t be reeling with affection at this point of my existence and you wouldn't be so messy on a temple" 

Under his stare, turned absolutely lustful due to his inflamed state, Ten sat up on the bed. 

Had he just said he felt those soft sentiments for Taeyong? He couldn’t focus on one thing only. 

Ten's naked body wasn’t less of a wonder than the man claimed Taeyong’s own to be, and it made Taeyong stare absentmindedly at him, desiring every inch of skin and flesh and forgetting all the previous doubts about his appearance he could ever have. 

He had the black scarring climbing up on his forearms, his chest and part of his collar like ink drawing patterns, but his skin was smooth and warm like a human's. 

No, it was better than a human. His pose and his vibration were more powerful than that, much more than anyone with the Prime Minister title or the Emperor's Crown. 

Just a bit of him deserved more worship and adoration than a tepid governor would ever gather.

Taeyong spaced out drinking from his appearance and wondering if there were any flaws in him. 

His lines were beautiful, shaping his arms with hard edges and the danger of a blade and balancing it out with the soft curve of his hips and his stomach. His flesh looked warm and soft, with thick thighs to kiss and a more than decent butt to squeeze. It all made Taeyong want to get lost on the folds of his skin, eyes falling on his lap to witness how his shaft was hard and big, waiting for Taeyong to take care of it too. 

"We agreed to do it like that so indulge me a little, would you?" 

When Taeyong licked his dry lips and went back to reality, the ghost - still armed with his heady, smug smile- was taking a candle from the bed's railings and blowing the flame.

"Sorry, Ten"

"What are you sorry for, love? Let me hear you"

"It’s because I didn't answer… but you take my breath away and it's hard to speak when you… touch me like that" he murmured the last part, but Ten was unyielding.

Taeyong’s big eyes followed him with sparkles of curiosity and yearning as the ghost climbed on top of him, leaving Taeyong's body between his legs as he stood on his knees. 

His free hand held Taeyong's wrist and pinned it to the mattress, over his head, securing the blonde down with his own weight. 

"Ah, I see… You wanted to cum with my hand around you?"

"Ye- _aaah_ , _fuck_! Ten, I just-!" 

The man on top had tilted the candle slightly, wax sizzling across Taeyong’s chest full of violet blooms and melting his flesh with an exhilarating twinge of delightful pain. 

It was unlike anything Taeyong had tried, and his brain switched off to reason, body squirming out of his control, trying to resist the stimulation that traveled to his twitching length. The tip was drooling transparent release on his navel and aching with bliss. 

He looked at Ten with widened eyes. 

"You okay, love?" He whispered, kissing his hot cheeks faintly to reassure him, intoxicating Taeyong with the sensation of being taken care off yet granted the endless pleasure of wicked passion.

Taeyong nodded, so Ten’s eyes went back to his and held his gaze with lust. 

Ten was gentle with him, but his conception of mildnes had been distorted a long ago. 

Taeyong didn't mind it at all.

Again, he left the white drops of wax pour, nearing the pink swollen buds of the medic and this time he moaned, enjoying the candent drip of sweet torment with tears welling at the corners of his eyes. 

He was filled up with dozens of different sensations. The burn, the sting, the built up pleasure on his throbbing hatdnes, the soft touch of Ten's skin against his... it was mind-boggling, as it was too much to take at once.

"More please, Ten, please, _please_ "

"You like being reprimanded?" Asked Ten with a tone of strain, making Taeyong know that he was making him struggle as well. 

He was making Ten get riled up, and that was what felt even best.

The ghost setted the candle aside and picked a different one. He didn’t put it out this time before letting slow drips of hotter wax trail along Taeyong's taut stomach, going dangerously low. 

His hips writhed and a sharp cry spurted from Taeyong's lush mouth with tears spilling on his flushed cheeks. 

Ten held him down still, grabbing his waist against the bed to steady him. The liquefied candle fell on Taeyong’s nipple, sensitive and overused after Ten’s tongue. It caused white stars to show up on the back of his eyelids, shutting his eyes tight. 

He was sweating, squirming, coiling, gasping for air and feeling it would never be enough oxygen to balance out his trance.

"If you do it, _yes_. Only if it's you" 

That made a difference that manifested in Ten in the form of a sudden pause. 

Taeyong noticed the sudden snap, quickly deciding to exploit the flicker of radicalization in Ten’s eyes. 

"Because I'm smart. We agreed that I wouldn’t disregard my life. In the city people have bad judgement… they adulate the titles even when they are incompetent and useless…" he said, still sobbing as the cold wax solidified on his skin. "I'm not letting anyone else push me over, but we trust each other and you told me you won't hurt me, so only _my_ Yongqin can reprimand me" 

"Oh, love, you are so fucking heart-stopping, saying those things to me… you want me insane?" he cooed, gently soothing him with his fingers on his cheek, whipping away the crystal tears of the blonde. "You are so good to me, aren't you?" 

"I a-ah!" He was caught off guard when Ten tilted the candle again and the built up melted wax fell onto his hip generously, stinging as it dripped down, still boiling hot. His body was shaking, and his eyes blurry with tears due to the overwhelming discovery of pain being able to revert into pleasure. "I am" 

"Again, love. A bit louder"

He threw his head back and his back arched from the bed with a pathetic moan as the sting and the burn of the hot liquid poured on the sensitive flesh of his inner thigh, still immobilised under Ten which, by the way, only brought him more pleasure.

"I- I- I am!" 

"That’s right" smiled Ten, blowing the other candle and tossing it wherever it belonged to. "That was enough of a lesson then"

Taeyong smiled, still gone, he couldn't recover before his eyes shut and he welcomed the kiss of the ghost. 

It felt soft and light after the hectic punishment, embedded with adoration from Ten. The kind of loving gesture that had been waiting at the very bottom of his spirit, held by someone whose hope hadn’t died yet, to come out to cherish the chosen one. 

"Still want to cum, love?" 

The pressure his hand put on the swollen tip of Taeyong’s leaking cock felt insane even with just light fingers holding it gently. He didn't realise how sensitive he was growing during their play. 

He was spent already, and between his legs he just felt the pulse of unrelenting libido, but there was no truce that Ten would give him now they were unleashed. 

"Yes, please, please" He panted in response, lifting his hips to make his shaft glide on Ten's hold, swelling and almost over, ready to come basically undone. 

He was so wet that Ten's fingers ran soaked when he slid them down, massaging his balls as they got tighter. That was good, it was _amazing_ as Ten squeezed them and rubbed his thumb on the base of his pole, but it wasn't _enough_ , and that couldn’t be it coming from the black haired one because he just somehow knew where to touch and which buttons to press to drive Taeyong absolutely mad with need. 

“Although… I could keep ruining your orgasms” he said with a gentle, sweet kiss on Taeyong’s lips. “So that I could keep you with me forever and a day” 

“Whatever you want” he panted. He felt exhilarated, and in his growing ecstasy, his thoughts were nowhere near rational. Not that Taeyong had proven to be rational either way. "If you want to ruin me again and again, do it. Make me feel like this all the time if you want to

Ten’s thumb flicked, brushing bluntly across the slit. Taeyong mewled with delight. He was not ashamed of his noises after Ten’s thorough insistence in the fuel he found on them.

Not that he could have controlled them anyway when he felt the tips of his fingers move down through his ass cheeks and circle on his puckered hole with the glide of precum dripping from him.

"I want to play there" Ten said with his smoky whispers, tilting his head to the side as he looked down on Taeyong with a sneer. "Can I?"

He was sitting astray over Taeyong’s thigh, and his cock was proudly erect and brushing against the plush flesh, pleasing himself too and smearing his natural juices over him with the slow swing of his hips.

Taeyong could only think about being parted open by his big and hard cock, being touched deep inside, so profoundly that no one else could reach it and pleasure him the same. He wanted to be poisoned with Ten’s nectar and keep it with him as a memory of their secret.

"Inside me?"

"Yes, my dick inside your perfect ass" The manner in which he spoke at him was something that Taeyong couldn't bear with. "Better than getting off to my hand?"

"Y-yes" he stuttered in anticipation with Ten pressing just the tip of one finger against his entrance. 

He spread his legs wider, making himself more open for the other man to enjoy and giving him a full view of his pink hole. 

Ten smiled at him content with the vision and took it as a queue, dipping his digit, still wet and slippery due to Taeyong’s clear spill, into his snug hole. It was slow and relentless, entering him ripping a moan out of Taeyong’s chest as his walls tightened up around it.

"Don't you even play with yourself when you are at home?" Murmured Ten, mostly talking his thoughts out loud as the scorching heat of Taeyong’s muscles clenched around him, sucking his digit in. "You don't pleasure yourself and moan when you are alone? Or you didn't have anyone to think about?"

Taeyong’s mind was dulled by the pressure put inside him, starting to slowly pump in and out of him once he was used to the stretch; but he tried to think about the question he was asked. 

Byun Baekhyun was once someone that he admired with a twist of sentiment, but it seemed far with Ten’s finger stimulating him and touching his spot. 

It felt like a blur, and too faint compared with _this_. 

"N-no" he answered, pausing for a second to whine due to the withdrawal of the finger inside him but returning to groan with the insertion of two digits together after he collected more of his precum on his fingers, plunging down harder than before. Taeyong’s breath was clipped, his hands fisted at both sides of his face, and a sprout of sincerity came from the blonde. "But I had fun with myself anyway"

"Of course you had, you are such a good boy… Just look at yourself, with your beautiful dick all hard and on display for us" 

"I can show you when you want, I can make you look at me while we do it. It would please me so bad!" 

"Is that so, love?" 

"Yes!" He coughed with enthusiasm, as Ten picked up the pace of his fingers and began kissing and sucking on Taeyong’s neck and shoulders. "Yes… yes"

“Alright, but from now on… you shall only think about me when you do it. When I'm gone you can only feel this pleasure because of me, alright?”

“N-!” Taeyong gasped, as Ten, deep in his ass, bent his fingers and found the nub of his nerves, pushing against it and making the blonde think he was going to climax right there and then, throwing his head back. “No, don’t leave” he tried again, mouth going slack with the sensation of beginning to be filled up as he craved more. He needed a deeper grind, the contact of another person within him. “Don’t leave, Ten, please, I don’t-” 

“Hey, hey” crooned the black haired one, stilling his hand to let Taeyong catch his breath before the medic could asphyxiate with his own words mixing up with pants. He used a soft voice as he dotted his face with peppering kisses. “I’m here, alright?”

“Will you leave afterwards?” asked Taeyong, still out of breath. 

Surprisingly, it didn’t take Ten all the grams of his concentration to feel the jab of affliction running through Taeyong at that moment, he really did understand what the human boy was asking for. 

He was blissed out almost to completion, nearing an orgasm that he had been waiting for for ages, sweaty, with the hot blood of his body coloring his cheeks and being the background color of the dried out path of his pleasure tears; and still, the moment transcended to the sudden sexual rendezvous, their stares lacing together with tenderness and adoration. 

Taeyong looked even more beautiful than when he started seeing him, twinkling under candle lights in his bare form.

 _When_ did that happen? _How_ did that happen? It didn’t even matter. 

“Will you leave? You have to answer to me, we agreed”

“They will come for me, Taeyong, and at some point I will stop being mild and wreak havoc so-”

“Take me with you” he pleaded, but Ten shook his head with a mellow smile, repositioning himself on his knees between the spread legs of his lover to move his fingers further. The abandoned temple filled up with the pleased, involuntary sounds from the blonde again, moaning as Ten’s fingers entered him over and over and over. “Please, Ten, please, I just… ah- I don't want to be… hmm... alone, please, don’t leave”

“I will come back to you, I won’t be gone forever” hummed Ten, as his other hand took over Taeyong’s neglected dick to stroke it mercilessly. 

Taeyong’s lips parted on a loud moan that muffled against Ten’s lips descending onto him to lock in a passionate kiss. The sensations built quickly while the first waves of orgasm washed over him.

The ghost also gasped and moaned onto the kiss, enjoying himself too even if he wasn’t being directly loved, but it was enough to get Taeyong like that for him to dribble with enthusiasm. 

There was no possible way for Taeyong to hold back his ecstasy any longer, he couldn’t take it anymore. His arms wrapped around Ten, his nails dug on his shoulder blades drawing red lines on his skin and his length twitched on Ten’s hand, unable to resist more pleasure coming to him in all the ways he was being taken care of. He erupted with a hot, creamy ribbon of white silk between their stomachs. He shot his head back as his body spammed with rapture and Ten conducted him to spend out his euphoria, massaging him until his cock trembled dry and his body went limp.

He was panting while he smiled. Taeyong really swooned while his lover pampered him with his faint touches down his hips and legs, his languid kisses all over his stomach, his thighs and his face.

“Taeyong, you are so lovely, you are amazing, I have never seen someone so sweet and alluring like you” he kept murmuring, and Taeyong believed it. "Who would have told me I would be shot through the heart after all this time?"

Taeyong had been projected to another plane of existence, humming and nodding in response and letting himself be praised. 

From the outside it would have sounded insane, Xuxi or Kai would have rushed with their swords unsheathed to save him from Ten if they found them like this; but Taeyong just knew while looking at Ten’s eyes that he was being earnest. And to be the only one who had stopped such demonic strokes inside the man felt like the highest stage of romance. 

Even if he was a wrathful ghost, he knew Ten was thinking about his well being. Deep down under the cloud of darkness that shaded his old self, the hopeful and heartfelt cultivator he once was, remained. 

Taeyong was proved right, there were glimmers of radiance that made the world brighter. 

If he was going to need to wait for Ten to return after this night, he might as well take everything he could get. 

Taeyong's legs were still shaking, but he hovered on the chaise, going on his knees as he pushed his hands against the mattress and arched his back with a soft purr leaving him as the lasting traces of bliss bubbled in him. 

Ten stroked the small of his back, caressing his skin and pressing feathering touches on his tailbone. 

"Please, fill me up with your love before you go" he muttered, grinding his hips against his hands lasciviously.

"Is that what you want?"

"Yes, please. Just let me keep you with me"

"I can’t deny you your wishes, love, I'm unable" crooned Ten, caressing his blonde hair carefully.

Next thing he felt was the bluntness of the ghost’s tip pressing up against his gaping hole and, oh, he was bigger than Taeyong had planned. His walls offered a momentary resistance and then gave in, welcoming his girth as his lids turned heavy and his eyes rolled back. 

Ten groaned, his mouth open in a gasp, and his eyebrows furrowed with concentration to not trust in him sharply, his hot hands attached now on his hips. 

"Aah..." breathed out Taeyong, about to break into screaming and made the temple whicked only by his attitude. "Fuck, Ten..." he cried, weally. "Would you fill me up, please?"

Ten luckily had access to press a kiss under his ear and talk quietly. Not because no one could ever hear them in the middle of nowhere, but just because it felt like the right way to speak to Taeyong’s deserving heart. 

"Of course I will. But love, if we really are to spend time together, if you really are willing to trust me that deeply, you shouldn't worry like this. Is my promise that I will return to you" 

"P-promise me with your name" commanded Taeyong with a shaky voice as his hips gyrated. "You can't lie over your name, right? I could- What could I do with your true name?"

Taeyong’s body writhed as the stretch of his entrance turnt a slight sting into a hot and exhilarating pump of felicity. 

His back arched as he slammed Ten into himself, pushing forward and stretching his walls impossibly wider.

The ghost buried his face on the crook of Taeyong’s neck with the sudden embrace, tight and suffocatingly hot around him, waves of weakness crashing on him while his length was deliciously squeezed by his lover's heat. 

For more than his rational part wanted to go slow for Taeyong, or at least merciful or tender, he could not hold the impulse back, moving his hips and driving in. 

He thrusted his hips upwards, letting his cock part Taeyong inside, penetrating his tight ass, sliding all the way in. 

He dove into the blonde again and again. 

"Summon me, control me…" enumerated Ten, punctuating the list with a trust each time, his voice growing raspier. "Bind me or kill me, if you, only you, ever wanted" 

Taeyong’s eyes were glazed, his mouth parted, droll spilling from his lips with the unbearably hard avalanche of relish taking over his oversensitive body. 

He had come minutes ago but he was so hard again, kicking the refractory period off the table and getting to that _petite mort_ Ten had joked about once.

He could laugh on the face of those maides who said he was beautiful now, knowing that Ten was only his and for him.

"N-no, I wouldn’t… I won't!”

“Well, you are the only one who could do it. The only one I’d reveal my name to so you can do _whatever_ you want with me. My destiny is on your hands”

“No! Never, I will never! Do that!" he hiccuped with a hoarse voice. "I just want you to see you again" 

Ten chuckled lovingly, but he was not so delicate when he grasped Taeyong’s ponytail and tugged back, slotting the boy's back against his chest, pulling hip up on his lap to sit straight on his shaft, stretching him up and filling him to the hilt. 

He squealed loudly as the intense love ran up his spine. 

Taeyong sunk himself down again, moving his hips slowly and humming, drunk on bliss. 

"You are so good, so hot" groaned the younger, forcing him to move up and then down, executing a little bounce over his lap that had Taeyong himself breathing in sharply. "And yes, I promise you, as Ten and as Li Yongqin, that I will come back to you"

Taeyong found the most pleasure in Ten's words dripping from his blood-red lips, giving up to the sad romance they felt attracted to as he began to move up and down once he grew used to the girth of his lover nestled inside his ass. 

He then, started hopping on his lap, moving faster each time he rose himself on and came back down, hugging Ten’s length in an insanely hot envelope that had him panting, gasping and urging the blonde to move faster and rougher, guiding his moves with his arms steady around his thin waist. 

They were poisoning each other with the piecing dynamics of their lives crashing, coiling like two serpents biting each other's tails in a vicious circle. 

Ten pulled his hair more, eliciting a pleased moan from both in unison that made his dick twitch just right inside the medic, sinking in deeper, whis his other hand gripping his hip.

"You like that?" He asked, a guttural voice coming out from him, pulling a bit harder to prove his enthusiasm, pleased to hear Taeyong keening all choked up. He chuckled, voice hoarse and throaty while the latter circled his hips, moving inside him sharply. “What is it? Are you close?”

Taeyong nodded. 

“S-so c-close”

It was faint, but Ten heard it even upon the sound of slapping skin as his hips slammed against Taeyong’s small asscheeks, each stroke wrecking his nerves as he hit Taeyong’s spot. 

“Me too, love, so come for me, uh?” whispered Ten. And paired with how he wrapped his hand around Taeyong’s hardness again, it was all that took from the latter’s muscles to clench hard as his body gave up to the vertiginous high that made him shake and his eyes tear again with a happy, euphoric fragment of a moment. “That’s right, love, do it like that for me”

A second, harder orgasm teared into his body, watching through half lidded eyes how Ten's expression also contorts into brainwrecking bliss.

Ten groaned and moaned and panted, just like Taeyong; still not stopping the now erratic pace of his hips and taking the doctor higher and higher through his orgasm. His nails dug deep on Taeyong’s hips and finally, with a blissed out gasp, he spilled his hot seed inside Taeyong, filling him up in a way he couldn’t feel by himself. 

He was exhausted, but Taeyong exceeded the tiredness an eternal ghost could feel by spades, so Ten took care of his weight, supporting his body and kissing the salty drops off his cheeks.

“It’s okay, love, everything is okay, you can rest now” he said, pulling blonde strands of hair away from Taeyong’s damp forehead. “Let’s lay you down comfortably. You did so well for me, love, that really was something”

"That… was good?"

"It was amazing, love. I had forgotten how it felt like" 

Between his sweet words, Ten took a moment to pull out from the medic carefully, making the white release he had spilled inside him trickle down. 

Taeyong whined with a hum, letting Ten place his body on the bed and his head on the pillow. “But I liked it inside”

Ten giggled underbreath and gave a chaste kiss on Taeyong’s lips.

"Don't be deviant, we'll have other chances" 

Everything felt like it had shifted, but it was because it _had_. 

Not in his wildest dreams Taeyong would have become the lover of a wrathful ghost, but after all, he guessed everyone carried their burden with different results and Ten was not the one who chose to be the vessel of war chaos. 

He lighted up his heart and the medic could not help that. Knowing that Ten would not take his curse against him was enough of a secure for him, who was now doomed to wait for him in the nights, hoping that he would appear with his red umbrella to kiss his lips or talk about fans. 

Taeyong wanted to embrace him and rest, cuddled by his side and knowing there wouldn’t be anything to fear in his sleep if Ten was there for him. 

It was ironic, but he felt _safe_ and loved next to Ten.

Yet, he had to wait for him a couple of minutes more as the man moved to the place of the temple where he stored his belongings so he could go back to Taeyong with a clean towel, a basin of warmed up water and another jar of drinking water. 

“You should clean yourself before sleeping, we got a bit filthy” 

Taeyong nodded, gulping more cold water down his dry and sore throat first. 

Ten left again, playing with his hair and tying up on a bun that he held with the pin he had earlier nailed onto the floor, revealing a better picture of his breathtaking profile stained with black lines on his temple, his cheek and even his neck. 

The medic guessed he needed to clean himself too, because he had been shamelessly dripping on the ghost’s hands. 

He observed him in the distance with a smile playing with his lips. Ten was truly beautiful like nobody. Lean and with that gracious pose that was so obviously a belonging from his past, noble self. 

More of the old Li Yongquin than he thought remained in him, Taeyong could see it. 

When some minutes had passed and the sleepiness started to linger, he sat cross legged on the chaise and soaked the cloth on the water with the calculated accuracy he usually used to clean his patients wounds, looking down at his own body to wash away the sweat, mixed up with other substances staining him up. 

Next, he undid his ponytail, long blonde hair at the back of his head gracing his shoulders with the tips as he combed the tangled hair with his fingers.

He gently got rid of the wax that had clumped on his chest like snowflakes pilling up on the wilds, discovering and remembering the purplish blotches of love Ten had put under his collar. He felt amused by them, smiling as he poked his skin with curiosity, watching the momentary white mark when he pressed over the colours before they spreaded again.

He liked the art put on him as a token of affection. 

Taeyong was, after all, an addict of affection, and that’s what Ten got him drunk with. It was alright, people in the world had worse vices and flaws than love. 

Ghosts were not as scary as people. 

The muffled footsteps of Ten’s stealthy movements came back towards the bed while Taeyong was cupping water on his hands and using it to wash his face and freshen up a little after the dip of his mental velocity that the orgasm had caused. 

“You can have this” crooned Ten. 

Taeyong looked up at him to check what was the man referring to, only to find him on a clean change of violet bedwear, holding a beautiful, pink robe made of silk with golden and blue flowers embroidered on it and a sash with tassels at the bottom to tie it up. 

It was the most beautiful thing Taeyong had been offered in his life, and his sparkling eyes said all Ten needed to know when he lifted them to lock with his.

“It’s a very beautiful robe”

“I imagined you would like it. You can keep it” 

Taeyong was slipping into the silky piece of clothing, already loving the touch and the scent, filled up with memories of Ten that would hug him whenever he chose to wear it. 

He felt a disgusting urge to cry, riled with emotions and feeling of relief after a long life with not a single pat on his back that felt as good as this one, so deep from somewhere in Ten’s sane soul.

“Seriously? I can?”

“Yes, of course. And you know what?” asked Ten, sitting next to him again with a grin of mischief that would have made the medic tremble days ago, but thrilled him at that moment. “I think it could match well if you wear it with this” 

Taeyong’s eyes _glowed_ like the sun when the ghost balanced a well-known hair pin on his hand, just as he had done days prior to that night rendezvous. 

It was a jade hair needle with swinging chains that adorned themselves with pink enamel roses, the hue very similar to the robe he was wearing. 

He moved his hand to take it and once more, he stopped before he touched it. 

He stared at Ten chewing on his bottom lip and the latter waited, holding his gaze and trying to guess what made his lover pause this time. 

“You stole it?”

Ten let out a humorous breath. “Your moral compass is intriguing for me, but if you want to know, I actually bought it with money. In the _legal_ way”

“Why?”

The ghost shrugged. “You said you liked it and I thought it would have suited you. It’s very stupid because I didn’t think this will happen or that I will have the chance to give it to you, but I didn’t want other people to wear it, only you”

Taeyong winced, speechless out of a sudden. His heart could have left his ribcage flapping like a bird and he- with his knowledge of medicine and anatomy- would have watched it like a perfectly normal event. Just by thinking that he would have to let Ten go the morning after without a real clue of when he would be back to warm his side, his chest depressed. 

The tears rolled down his cheeks and he felt embarrassed that all that he could do in front of Ten seemed to be the act of crying helplessly as the latter freed his worries and pressed down emotions. 

“You don’t like it? Are you upset?” whispered Ten with concern as he moved closer to him to wipe the tears off his cheek. 

“Not at all, I just… never had something so pretty being gifted to me”

“Oh, love…” he said, hugging the medic’s frame, which felt smaller now. “It’s okay, I’ll get you thousands if that’s what you like”

He didn’t take the pin, instead, he turned around to give his back to Ten, who stared at him with surprise. 

He hovered over Ten’s crossed legs and sat down giving him his back a lot differently than he had done before. 

It caused a different style of heart clenching for the ghost. 

“Put it on my hair”

His shoulders relaxed and his chest felt relieved with a chuckle, pressing the tip of the pin on the back of Taeyong’s neck and moving it up to collect his ashy blonde hair with it, eliciting tingles and a soft sigh from the older. 

He took the opportunity to press a gentle kiss on his nape. 

“Anything for you"

**Author's Note:**

> Here is my [ Twitter](https://twitter.com/leechailatten) if you want to take a look!
> 
> My kofi is also available in my bio, and commissions are open there ^^


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